Reconstruction
by balthezarian
Summary: Trying to rebuild is never easy. The sequel to "Empty House".
1. Chapter 1

Note: This story is a direct sequel to my earlier story, "Empty House". While there is nothing written in the laws of any nation I am aware of that state that you _must_ read that story first, it is recommended. Like most sequels, there are numerous references to the previous story.

Whether you read the other one or not, I sincerely hope that you enjoy this story!

/

It was three days after the Briefs household had been gloriously reunited. They had flown home immediately and quickly set up everything just as it was a month earlier, replacing everything that had been taken down and, as Trunks had put it, 'unpinkafying' Bulma and Vegeta's room. The rest of that day had been spent with all of them together, simply sitting around and watching movies. All three of them had been battling exhaustion, among other things, and sitting around was all any of them seemed to have the energy for.

The next couple of days were spent quietly. The family tried to fall back into their former routines, but it was proving to be much more difficult than any of them anticipated. The strain of the past month had taken a far more extreme toll on them than anyone had thought. Old traditions like having dinner as a family were awkward, stilted moments that involved little conversation and even less eye contact. They kept themselves isolated from the rest of the group, claiming that they were enjoying some family time, but they had been anything but enjoying it.

Bulma had only gotten parts of her memories back. While there was certainly enough for her to begin reforming her family, it had quickly become apparent that there were still enormous gaps missing. When her son brought something up, she found herself able to catch the reference far fewer times than she would like. Most of the major events were there, but most of the little moments, the ones that people treasure and make them who they are, seemed to still be gone.

It was incredibly frustrating for her. She had been hoping for more 'magic moments' where simple things done around the house would stimulate the right part of her mind to bring back a memory, but since they had returned to Capsule Corp, she had not had another one. She found herself increasingly agitated as she tried to force a jump start on her memories with no success. The harder she tried, the more withdrawn she became.

She felt obligated to spend time with her family, knowing fairly well what they had been through, but at the same time she just wanted to be left alone. As such, she would occupy the same room as her husband and son, but barely interacted directly with them.

Her odd behaviors were lost on no one in the household. Trunks and Vegeta had tried for a few hours to pull her back into their world, to engage her actively in things she had developed a love for in the past decade, but her resistance against them wore them out quickly. They were not interested in starting unnecessary fights with her. Vegeta, in particular, was oddly accommodating to the woman's wishes. He seemed hyper aware of any time she seemed to be getting worked up, and he was mindful to avert them whenever he could. After all, their last big fight they had pushed Trunks to ascend.

Trunks was struggling enough with his own problems. The ascension had forced a radical change to begin in his body that he could not control. He found himself battling fatigue and he found himself prone to breaking out into random sweats. His focus was often shot, and every once in a while it seemed as though he was unaware of his surroundings altogether.

So three days later, the little family sat in their enormous kitchen with their breakfast, and not one of them looked up. The tension in the room was all consuming, and it was more than the youngest prince could endure. He slammed his hands down on the table and screamed, "Oh my god, why won't you even look at us anymore?"

Both adults looked up. Bulma blinked, extremely confused by the outburst. "What?" she asked.

"Trunks!" Vegeta scolded.

"No! I am so sick of this!" the child cried out. "I can't stand the fact that you're so damn hung up on your own problems that you won't even look at us! I swear, Mom, it's like you don't care about us at all!"

Vegeta glared at his son, shouting out, "Trunks!"

The lavender haired boy glared right back at his father with a daring that he had never before shown. "What, you're going to yell at me now? That would actually be fine by me! That's what you do, Dad. But ever since Mom got hurt, I don't even know who you are anymore! I swear, you're worse than Gohan!"

Bulma frowned and reached out for her son. "Honey, please..."

"Don't you dare 'honey' me!" he hissed, pulling away. "You don't get to do that, Mom! You don't get to blow me off and expect me to just deal with it because of some damn term of endearment!"

Vegeta shot to his feet and slammed his hands against the table. "Boy! That is enough!"

Trunks knew that he was walking on thin ice as it was, but he did not want to stop. He had been bottling up so much for so long that he just wanted to scream until it bled out of his system. But he knew that he could not do that, and that there were enough other problems without him having a total meltdown. Frustrated, the child shoved his plate away and stormed out of the room. Neither parent moved after him.

Bulma let out a breath that she did not even realize she had been holding. She slumped down in her chair and looked at the doorway her son had just exited through. "What is the matter with him?" she asked.

Remaining on his feet, Vegeta slowly turned his glare toward his mate. "Are you serious?" he balked.

The heiress raised a drawn in eyebrow at her prince. "What?"

"He just told you!" Vegeta shot back. "How much more clearly does that need to be stated for you? If _I_ can figure out, _anyone_ can!"

Bulma could feel her cheeks turning red, but she did not want to appear as distraught as she felt. "Well," she casually answered, "I think he's exaggerating..."

"The hell he is!" her husband yelled. "You have avoided directly interacting with us since the first morning we were back here!"

"That's a damn lie and you know it!" the heiress furiously defended. "I've spent the entire last two days with the two of you!"

Vegeta circled around the table, approaching her from behind. "No," he lowly spoke, "you have spent the last two days in the same room with us. You have been only allowing us to partake in activities where you do not have to actually talk to us."

Bulma glared at him from over her shoulder, choosing to keep her back to him. She was already tired of the fight, so she tried to change the subject. "So you two don't like movies?" she lamely attempted. "That's what this is about?"

Grabbing her and pulling her up to her feet, Vegeta glared at his woman. "Stop pretending that you're innocent," he hissed. "Stop pretending that you don't care. Stop pretending that everything is fucking _fine_!"

With anger burning in her eye, Bulma full faced her husband. "Well, it's not like I chose to have this happen to me!" she screamed.

"You think we did?" the Saiyan shot back.

Bulma's eyes grew wide, and she took a step away from the man. "That was low, Vegeta," she whispered, her voice dripping with hurt. "You know damn well that I'm still trying to get back on my feet, and I don't think it's all that unreasonable for me to need a little time before I'm back to whatever self I was before this accident happened!"

Still glaring, Vegeta fully let go of her shoulder. "Fine."

Bulma blinked. "What?"

"Fine," he repeated. "If you need some time, you will have some time. But you need to pay attention to the boy, too. Your life was not the only one that got torn apart, and you know that."

"Well what do you expect me to do?" she genuinely asked.

Vegeta snorted. "Looking at him would be a good start," he growled.

Fury crossed Bulma's face as she hissed back, "I do look at him!"

"Only enough to not run in to him," the prince shot. "You want to get some of your life back? Ask the damn kid questions about your past!"

Slowly, Bulma could feel herself calming down. "I guess I could," she admitted. "Look, I really am sorry about the last couple of days. I got swept up in that first day because I thought that everything was going to come back to me. I thought that this whole damn thing was over. But that didn't happen, and I'm just...I'm so confused about everything."

Vegeta sighed and sat back down, his meal completely forgotten. "I know."

"I just want this to go away," Bulma softly went on, also taking a seat. "I want it to all go away."

"It's not going to."

Paling slightly, the heiress slowly turned her head toward her husband. "What did you say?"

"I said…"

"Why do you have to say that?" she interrupted with a horrified gasp.

"Because it's true," he callously replied. "I fail to see what lying to you would accomplish other than building up a hope that cannot possibly be fulfilled."

Frustrated, Bulma got back to her feet, smacking the table as she went. "Why can't you ever be supportive?" she demanded in an accusatory tone. "Why can't you ever do something for someone else?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" the prince shouted back. "I have bowed to your every need since you went over that damn cliff! I have done nothing to harm you or upset you!"

"Oh, don't give me that crap," the heiress sneered. "You were deliberately goading me on just a few nights ago!"

Vegeta rolled his eyes but remained in his seat. "Goading you on is not harming you," he reasoned.

"It is when I'm an emotional wreck!" Bulma retaliated.

"Well, you didn't seem all that upset when I started!" Vegeta shot back. "You claim to desire a return to normalcy for us, but the few moments we spend actually behaving the way we normally do, you immediately shut down! It is not going to be fast, Bulma. It is not going to be easy. And it sure as hell is not going to be _fun_. But if you actually _want_ to get your damn life back, stop blocking us out!"

The room fell deathly silent. In all the years they had been together, rarely had Vegeta opened up to that magnitude. In fact, with Bulma's broken memories, she could not even remember that handful of times. It was a wild departure from what either of them were comfortable with.

Letting out a very frustrated huff, Vegeta shook his head. "You want time?" he bit out. "Fine." He shoved himself away from the table and began to leave the room, fed up. The urge to crank up the gravity as far as it could go seemed so satisfying at the moment. That usually helped.

But his path was blocked by the balded human woman. "No," she firmly stated. "Don't go."

"Why, are you not done blaming me for your problems yet?" he retorted.

"No," the heiress calmly answered, "I just…" She sighed and shook her head. "You made a good point."

That certainly was not what the prince had been expecting. "Come again?"

"You were right," Bulma restated. "I need to let you guys be yourselves. I've been trying too hard to control everything, and that's clearly not helping. So I guess the next step is to try to engage in what you two would deem to be the norm." She sighed and shook her head again. "I really, really want to get it all back." Softly, gently, she looked her prince in the eye. "I want to get everything I had with you back."

Feeling oddly fatigued, Vegeta simply watched his wife. He remained silent.

Slowly, the heiress took two steps toward her man. "To that end," she seductively stated, placing a hand on his broad chest, "I believe that it would be _mutually beneficial_ for us to engage in the one activity that I _know_ we do very, very well together."

Although they were stressed and worn and emotionally drained more than they would dare to admit, they barely hesitated before grabbing each other. They quickly made their way up to their newly decorated room, breaking in their navy blue sheets. It was where they were comfortable. It was where they were free. It was where they secure.

At that moment, it was all they had.


	2. Chapter 2

It was midafternoon. The heiress and her prince had spent the better part of the morning intimately with one another, engaging in round after round after round of passion. No talking, no pausing, no thinking. Just like they had been when they first started, it was nothing but raw heat between them.

But there was one major difference between when they had first started their unique relationship and that tumultuous moment. They had a nine year old son, one who had not been faring well over the past few days. While his parents were getting out their frustrations in their time honored tradition, Trunks was left to his own devices. Still mad at how everything had been going as of late, it was not a good situation to be in.

Trunks had been pouting in his room when his parents had taken to their usual pursuits. He could feel the wave of furious power burning within his young body, screaming to get out. The urge to just tear his entire room up and destroy everything around him was almost overwhelming. Ever since his ascension a few days earlier, he had found that urge creeping up more and more often. It was odd. He was aware that the feelings were not normal. He was aware of how violent and terrible the feelings were. And yet, he wanted so badly to just give in to them. It was so tempting, so very tempting.

But there was just barely enough sense in his clouded little mind to keep him from acting on those instincts. Unfortunately, with his immense power, that meant that the only options he could see available to him were rampant destruction or silent repression. He had tried his best to go along the quieter road, but after hours of forcing his urges down, it was no longer working. The walls seemed to be closing in on him. He just could not contain the pressure anymore. He had to get out. He had to get far, far away before he lost it.

And he was definitely about to lose it.

After sitting still as a statue for hours, Trunks had reached his limit. Barely able to keep from destroying it, he flung his window open and launched his little body out of it. He was not at all sure where he was going, and frankly, he did not care. As long as he was out, he was headed in the right direction.

The boy flew aimlessly for about half an hour before descending on a desert terrain. He landed hard, far harder than necessary, leaving a definite crater in his wake. But he was unaware of the damage his entry had caused.

His skin itched and his head throbbed. Without actually thinking about his actions, he kicked off his socks. In his haste, he had not bothered to put on his shoes before he had left. In a regular, rhythmic pattern, he began to clench and unclench his toes in the burning sands. Over and over and over again, steady as could be, the toes tightened and let go of the small grains beneath him. He began to breathe deeply in a vain attempt to calm himself.

Several minutes passed, his feet the only part of his body that moved. A strong desert wind began to swirl about him, sending the dust and sand flying around his body. He closed his eyes and groaned, reveling in the way the sand scratched at his burning skin. The winds got stronger, and the rough sands attacked his body violently. The relief was welcomed by the child, but it was not enough.

Trunks began to scratch his arms, his clouded mind finally able to understand what the sensation he felt was. He grated his nails fiercely against his arms and his torso, and once again, he felt mild relief. But he needed more.

The boy snatched at the sand by his feet. He began to rub it against his skin, but it quickly grew into a frantic fashion. As he hissed in agitation, he ground the grains powerfully against his flesh, tearing it open in his aggression. Tiny droplets of blood began welling toward the surface, and slowly they began to leak from his body. His arms and chest bore the brunt of his violent actions, and they were bright red with raw flesh and traces of blood.

He let out a low, guttural noise as his movements grew increasingly erratic. No matter how hard he attacked his skin, it still itched and burned so badly that it was driving him mad. Rougher and rougher he attacked his own body, dying for any true sensation of relief. As he continued his assault, his energy began to climb ever higher, littered with wild spikes. There was no control to any of his actions. There was barely any coherent thought in his overwhelmed mind, and his instincts were overruling what little there was.

It was too much to bear. He began to scream wildly, clawing disturbingly at his own body. To him, the world was blurring away. Even the sand that was lodged into his nose and throat was not registering, all paling in comparison to the torment that he felt. Every cell in his body felt like it was overloading and ready to burst.

Tears began to fly down his face as he dug his bare feet into the sand, his hands clawing away. His chest and arms had started bleeding heavily and his wounds were filling quickly with sand. The child screamed and cried as his focus moved to his neck and face, showing none of the restraint he had used when he had first started. It only took seconds for his face to be riddled with gashes. Bloody fingers tore dangerously close to his eyes and his jugular. It would not stop. The torment just would not stop. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he dug deeper and deeper into body. It was not fading at all, burning so badly the he could not control anything. Harder and harder and harder he clawed, all rationale gone and forgotten. His very well being had been thrown in the wind, and he grew ever closer to tearing apart more than could be repaired.

As the tempest within reached a new high, fists closed tightly over his small wrists. When his fingers could no longer reach his tortured flesh, he began to thrash in retaliation. He screamed as he desperately tried to free himself from his perceived jailer. Kicking and writhing, he did everything he could to liberate himself. With a shriek, he launched his head backwards, connecting hard with the chest of his captor.

But he was held firm. His blood ran freely over the strong fingers as his heart rate continued to rise and force the red substance out. The slick blood eliminated traction on the wrists, giving Trunks just enough freedom to temporarily slip his hands through his restraints.

It was not as successful as the boy would have liked. As soon as his captor had a free hand, he brought it down hard on the child's neck, overwhelming the pressure point and rendering the child unconscious. Completely drained and dripping with blood, Trunks collapsed face first toward the sand, caught barely before he landed roughly on the ground.

Shaking with tension, Gohan cradled the little boy against his chest. The blood seeped from the child onto his clothing, soaking him quickly in crimson. "Damn it," the teenager muttered, his voice ragged with stress. Without another moment of hesitation, he took to the skies, heading straight for the Lookout.

One month earlier, Gohan had made a near fatal error, opting for a more human approach and taking Bulma to the hospital instead of the guardian. It had damn near torn their entire group apart, and the teenager still struggled with the guilt of his choice. So he flew as fast as he could, desperate to get Trunks to Dende as fast as mortally possible.

"DENDE!" he hollered, his feet barely on the surface. There was no sign of the little guardian outside, but Gohan's teacher was waiting for them.

"Inside," the large man calmly instructed, watching as the two half bloods went inside. The seasoned warrior had sensed the wild energy shooting from the child, and if his protégé had not moved so quickly, he would have done so personally. That level of power was well above safe parameters, particularly for one so young and ill experienced. Saiyan blood or not, Trunks had been riding so high that he had nearly killed himself. Even without the blood loss, it was a miracle that the boy was alive.

Piccolo calmly entered the sanctuary, his facade far calmer than his actual feelings. He, like the rest of their allies, had been confident that the true ordeal was over. Everything had been wrapped up in a neat little bow, and several had cracked jokes about how everything was "happily ever after". Clearly, they had been wrong.

The enormous man watched as the little prince was placed on the cool tile floor, his blood quickly pooling around him. It was a gruesome scene. Trunks had mutilated his own body and face to the point where he was barely recognizable. Strips of flesh had been peeled away. Lines were gouged into his body. Coarse sand had clotted in the still bright blood that was forcing its way out of his wounds.

Dende quickly had his hands over the child, ready and eager to help. So often, the young guardian felt useless to his adoptive world. In spite of his given title, Dende felt that he had done little, if anything, to actually help the planet. If ever there was a chance to do a heroic deed within his skill range, the young god would jump at the opportunity.

As he began the healing process, though, his brow line furrowed. With a sudden gasp, he withdrew his hands. "Um, I am not certain this is a good idea."

Gohan shot a look of disbelief at his friend. "What?" he demanded. "Why?"

The young guardian sat back and crossed his legs, looking at his oldest friend. "Gohan, he's not under control," he pointed out. "I don't want to heel him from his wounds only for him to kill himself accidentally with that power."

"I know," softly answered the demi Saiyan. "Maybe you don't have to heal him all the way. You know, stop the blood loss but still leave him out?"

Dende nodded. "I can do that," he assured, once again getting his hands out over the boy. "You know that the wounds will remain visible, right?"

Gohan nodded. "I know."

Swallowing, the green boy kept his eyes on his work. "Um, about his parents…"

The taller teenager shook his head. "I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know what I'm going to tell them. I don't know where they've been, I don't know what they've been doing, I don't know what the hell has been going on in that house since they went home four days ago." Gohan sat all the way back, slumping against the cool wall of the sanctuary. "I thought this was over," he quietly said.

"We all did," Piccolo responded. The younger two jumped slightly, having forgotten about the large man for a moment. "It stood reason to believe that, with that particular brood reunited, the worst was going to be over. It would appear that we were mistaken in that calculation."

Gohan resumed his position against the wall and closed his eyes. He felt the shift in the atmosphere a moment before his father appeared. That, he had been waiting for. "Hey, Dad," he calmly said, his eyes still closed.

"Hey, sorry that took so long," Goku panted, glancing around the room. "Getting Goten to calm down was a lot harder than I thought it would be." As soon as his eyes fell upon the unconscious child, he winced. "Yikes, what happened?" he asked. "I mean I know he powered up like crazy, but I've never seen an energy spike cause…well, _that_…"

As Gohan got to his feet, Dende slid away from Trunks. The demi Saiyan extended a hand and helped his friend to his feet. "Thanks," Dende said, dusting off his robes. "He's going to be okay," he assured the three men in the room, "but I would keep a close eye on him for a while."

"Agreed," Gohan firmly stated. The teenager faced his father and offered him a sad smile. "Remember a few days ago when Trunks ascended?"

"Yeah," Goku nodded. "This is, well, phase two of that."

Goku could only stare blankly back at his son. "I don't understand," he quietly responded. "I mean, you, Vegeta and I have all ascended before, and we never went through anything like this."

Letting out a very tense sigh, Gohan approached his father. "I don't know what happened with you and Vegeta," the teenager solemnly began, "but with me…well, here's what happened to me…"


	3. Chapter 3

Vegeta slowly woke up, and his head throbbed. He had not even realized that he had fallen asleep after his and Bulma's passionate pursuits. _I must be more out of it than I thought I was_, the prince considered, sitting up in his bed. With a wince, he pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. _A _lot_ more out of it than I thought…_

Beside him, he heard a content sigh escape his still sleeping lover. Having sex with one another had definitely been what they had both needed. Although he would never admit it to anyone else, Vegeta could, just barely, admit to himself that he had been struggling since the day of Bulma's accident. Sometimes it was hard to believe that it had happened at all, sometimes it felt as though it had happened years ago, but most often, it felt like it had lasted for well over a month. In fact, it felt to him as though it had been going on for years and years.

Though his head throbbed, Vegeta still got out of bed. It had been a poor morning, followed by a glorious late morning, and it seemed to be rounding out to be a miserable afternoon.

As he tried to block out his pain, he began to pull on his training clothes. He had been extremely lapse about his training since everything had gone to hell. It was time to get back into the swing of things. Time to get back to his training. Time for the woman to start designing her machines again. Time for all the madness to end. He had been keeping himself in check for too damn long, and he was starting to feel genuine physical side effects from his radical shift in demeanor. He was a mean son-of-a-bitch by nature, and keeping his natural tendencies so repressed was going to kill him.

His head continued to scream at him, but he refused to give in to the pain. It was something that had never stopped him in the past, and the hell if it was going to stop him. He wondered whether or not to bring the boy into it, and quickly decided that they _both_ could use a little masochistic training. Even if the boy was half human, Trunks had proven well enough that he was worthy of being called a Saiyan Prince.

Vegeta closed his eyes completely, shutting out the pain and trying to find his son. For some reason, he was not able to sense the child's energy. Chalking it up to his dulled senses and increasingly pained head, Vegeta chose to walk down the hall to summon the boy personally. Regardless of how well or poorly he felt, the training really needed to get done.

"Boy," he called out, rapping on the door, "get out here."

No response came, but Vegeta was not surprised. The child had been on razor's edge as of late, and a spot of pouting was to be expected. Expected, but not highly tolerated. The prince was determined to set everything back as it was, and dragging the boy to his training was part of that ritual. "Boy!" he shouted, hitting the door harder. "Open this door immediately!"

One round of silence was expected, but two was not. Vegeta tried once again to sense out his son, pushing through the pain and forcing a blurred focus.

His eyes grew wide as he realized that his son was nowhere near the premises. "What the hell?" he growled. He could lock on enough to tell that Trunks was far off, but just could not hone it enough to pick out specifically where he was.

Cursing under his breath, the prince pressed harder as he tried to narrow his focus. He was having more trouble getting a lock on his son than he had trying to get a lock on anyone when he first gained the ability. The poor eating, the lack of training, the severe sleep deprivation, and the unbelievable stress had driven him back so far that it would likely take months just to make up for lost time.

"Damn it," he swore, struggling to narrow down where his son was. He was making some headway, but not much and not quickly. Instead of the usual bright lights of energy he could sense, there were only dulled representations blurring together in a murky haze. Further and further he narrowed down the location, but it only furthered his confusion. Trunks' energy usually outshone the rest of the planet, bar precious few. However, Vegeta could not get it to clarify.

A pit began to form in his stomach. Something was wrong. No matter how out of it he may be, there was no good reason for Trunks to seem that insignificant. Without pausing to think about anything, the Saiyan prince shoved the door off its hinges, rushed through his son's room, and took off through the open window. The energy signal was far from clear, but he could at least tell what direction it was in and he raced as hard as his worn out body could toward it.

Vegeta was standing on the Lookout before he even realized where he was. He had been focusing so hard on his son's life force that he had not paid attention to where, exactly, he was headed. As his toes touched down, it dawned on him that his behavior, even when he was _not_ forcing a change, he was acting different. Normally he was acutely aware of every little thing going on around him.

It actually unnerved him as he realized just how much he had lost. Being off his game was bad, but something was very not right.

Forcing his mind to focus on where he was, Vegeta realized that Piccolo was standing in front of him.

"Where is my son?" the prince demanded, sounding much more in control than he felt.

The green warrior eyed the prince warily. It had not been long at all since it had been Vegeta brought to the holy site for healing, and it appeared that the prince had not been faring well since. The Saiyan had been slowly getting worse and worse since the day of the accident, but no one had really talked about it more than the one time. Without saying a word, Piccolo led the prince into the palace.

Vegeta did not say a word as he entered the impressive building and walked straight for the room his son was in. When his eyes fell upon the boy, he honestly could not identify what it was he felt.

Trunks was still rubbed fairly raw. Even though the active bleeding had stopped, the boy still looked like an absolute wreck. The child's body, particularly his face, had lost the majority of its skin. If not for the lavender hair on the top of his head, Trunks would have been barely recognizable.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded.

From the side of the room, Gohan got up on his feet and approached the prince. "Ascension based episode," the teenager explained. During his own adolescence, Gohan had gone through a near identical experience a handful of times, and he had relied heavily on Vegeta and Piccolo to keep him restrained during his flair ups.

Vegeta stared at his son. Years ago, when Gohan had been going through a violent bout with puberty, the prince had always been able to sense a flair up. Even asleep he had been able to sense when the young teenager had a power surge.

How the hell had he missed it when it happened to his own son?

"When did this happen?" he angrily questioned.

Gohan stretched out his sore muscles and checked his watch. "It started about forty minutes ago," he informed. It had dawned on him quite a while ago that it was disturbingly odd that Vegeta had not been there, but it seemed like a poor time to bring it up. "I got him up here about a half an hour ago."

Vegeta's eyes narrowed as he processed the information. "Why are his wounds not healed, then?" he demanded.

Coming up next to the prince, the teenager looked down at the unconscious child. "Wasn't sure what would happen if he woke up," Gohan admitted. "I mean, if he was anything at all like me…"

"Then it held the potential to do an even greater amount of damage," the prince finished. With a clear, unspoken threat in his eyes, Vegeta glared at the teenager at his side. "If you have known about this for nearly an hour, why was I not informed?"

"No cell phone," Gohan quickly answered. "I had no way to call you from up here, and I thought it was better to stay and keep an eye on him than to fly down to the nearest telephone."

"You are not limited in communication to such devices," the pureblooded Saiyan accused. "You are practiced enough to have gotten my attentions without your ridiculous technology. I will ask you one more time, and I expect a proper answer, boy. Why was I not informed?"

"I forgot, okay?" Gohan snapped. "I made a damn mistake, so get off my back!"

The rare outburst caught the prince off guard, but he did not give any outward signs of surprise. It had been years since Gohan's last truly impressive mood swing, but no one in the group had completely forgotten how severe those moments could be. From the rear of the room, Piccolo approached the Saiyans.

"What would you recommend as the next course of action?" he asked of Vegeta.

Vegeta resumed staring at his young son. In all honesty, he had no idea at all what to do next. He held no further experience in the area of a violent ascension during developmental years than any other person on the Lookout. A pureblooded Saiyan in the throes of adolescents often had wild mood swings and power surges, but the degree of Gohan's problems had come out of left field all those years ago. Power spikes were not usually dangerous to the growing Saiyan in a pureblood, but Gohan had gotten dangerously close to dying almost every time a serious one had hit.

It appeared that Trunks was on an identical route.

Barely shifting his eyes to the green warrior across from him, the Saiyan firmly stated, "I will take the boy home. Now."

Gohan opened his mouth to protest, wanting to insist that Trunks stay for observation long enough for them to know what was going on, but the look on his mentor's face told him to stand down. "Do you need a hand?" he offered.

"I need nothing!" the prince snapped, glaring furiously at the teen. Without any further hesitation, he gathered his son in his arms and stormed out of the palace. He took to the skies the instant he was out the doors, and he did not look back as he headed to the compound.

Back at the Lookout, Gohan gave his mentor a concerned look. "Something is wrong."

"That is perhaps the most unnecessary statement I have ever heard from you," the green warrior returned.

The teenager glared, but there was a hint of amusement in his ebony eyes. "You know what I meant," he explained. "Trunks isn't doing anything we haven't seen before, but Vegeta…he's not alright, Piccolo."

"I am well aware of that."

"I mean, we knew that he was getting pale and losing weight," Gohan went on, mostly talking to himself at that point, "but I thought that he was fine other than that. I honestly thought the effects were strictly physiological. But that's clearly not the case."

"Gohan," Piccolo interrupted, "I am well aware of all of this. You are correct, there is something that is not right going on. However, we do not know exactly what that problem is, and I would wager that an immediate thorough interrogation of the family would likely cause significantly more harm than good."

With a frustrated grunt, Gohan ran his fingers through his short, spikey hair. "This isn't safe," he countered. "Leaving them alone is not going to help anything, it's only going to make it worse!"

"And so we will not leave them completely unattended," Piccolo counseled. "A direct confrontation would likely push both of them over a ledge we may not be able to retrieve them from, but that does not prevent us from monitoring their energies. We shall intervene if we sense a severe change in any way to either of them, but until then, we shall leave them be."

Gohan paced around in a small circle, his hands still lodged in his hair. "I don't like it," he responded.

"I did not suspect that you would," Piccolo answered. "However, regardless of how badly you may wish to force reality otherwise, you are not capable of controlling all that is around you. No man can, Gohan, and you need to learn that for yourself."

"There is a difference between trying to be a control freak and knowing that my friends are at risk for having something terrible happen!" Gohan shot back. "This is dangerous, and not just to Trunks and Vegeta. Both of them wield enough power to take out half the planet before any of us could get to them. And even worse, Bulma is at immediate risk during the next power surge! If something happened to her _again_, and one of _them_ caused it…"

Piccolo held up a hand to hush up his pupil. "I understand your concern," he patiently told the stressed out teenager, "but you need to learn that there is a time and a way to intervene. I say again to you, we will keep a close eye on their energies, but you know as well as I that there is nothing else that can be done." He placed a hand on his student's shoulder and gave it a reaffirming squeeze. "It is not your responsibility to save everyone."

Gohan, facing away from his mentor, barely looked back at him. "Someone has to do it," he softly said.

"Perhaps," Piccolo agreed, "but not you."

Though he had the urge to protest, Gohan kept his mouth shut. It was in his nature to protect everyone around him, to help in any way that he could. The concept of sitting around and waiting for either everything to work out or for something horrific to happen ran against every fiber of his being. It was actually causing him physical discomfort to fight his natural urges.

He sincerely hoped that everything would be alright, because if it did not, it was going to kill him.


	4. Chapter 4

Bulma groaned into her pillow, but there was a smile on her face. "Wow," she quietly said, putting her arms beneath her to roll over, "we need to start doing them a lot more often!"

Her smile faltered, though, as she realized that she was alone in her bed. "Damn it," she grumbled, pulling the sheet around her body for warmth. "Why is it _this_ is one of the only things I can clearly remember about our relationship?"

She reached off the side of the bed, the sheet still clutched tightly against her chest as she felt around for a scrap of clothing. It was a little too cool to spring out of bed in the nude, and she really did not want to feel that stark cold sensation if she did not have to. A smirk crossed her face as she felt something, but frowned when she pulled it up and saw what it was.

"Fantastic," she muttered. "The one piece of clothing I can grab from bed and it's his." She was not thrilled with it, but she only had to wear it long enough to get to her own clothing. After all, it was still easier that taking the bedding with her. She slid his shirt on over her head, tugging the hem down around her hips.

Her barely existent eyebrows raised slightly as she realized how well it fit her frame. It was by no means form fitting, but she realized that if she matched it with a belt and some leggings, she might actually have a very cute little outfit. "Well," she said to herself, "we are supposed to do more things as a family..."

When she was dressed, she went straight for the kitchen. None of them had actually gotten all the way through breakfast that morning, and after her passionate bedroom activities, she was famished. She made a straight course for the refrigerator, praying to whatever deity would listen that there was chocolate cake. Her prayers were answered, as she found a single piece remaining, on a plate, with a fork placed at the ready. She clapped her hands together and grinned. "Oh, this must be my lucky day!"

Her mood was through the roof. She was still riding glow of her morning passionate pursuits, her outfit was adorable, there was cake in the fridge, and she was slowly getting her life back on track. Things were finally coming up for Bulma Briefs.

As she finished up her sumptuous snack, it finally dawned on her that she had not heard a peep from the other residents of the house. "Vegeta!" she called out, putting her plate in the machine. "Are you here?"

No answer came, and Bulma frowned. She was fairly certain that the others should be home. She made her way toward the gravity room, trying again. "Hey, guys?" she shouted, approaching the large door. "If you're ignoring me, this isn't funny!" Her fingers flew across the keypad, entering the code that would stop the gravity and allow her access.

But the room was empty, with no signs of father or son. "Son of a bitch," she muttered, closing the door. "Where the hell could they be?"

The heiress made a systematic trail through her come house, following the grid she mapped out it her mind. Room by room was covered, and she grew more and more concerned as she went. "Hello?" she called out, rounding the corner into the living room. "Is anyone else home?"

But Bulma heard nothing in response, and she found herself unnerved. Since the day of her accident, she had hot been left totally alone for a moment. There had always been someone nearby to take care of her, to protect her, to help in any way they could. It was something that had not fully crossed her mind until she found herself alone in the compound, calling out and getting no response at all.

She found it odd, though, that both Vegeta and her son would just disappear without telling her something. Her memories with them were still few and far between, but the only moments she could remember them abandoning her were done as dramatic statements. If they were trying to tell her something by disappearing on her, they were doing a poor job because she had no idea what their message was.

Continuing to work her way through her enormous home, she wondered what on earth could have happened. There was always the possibility that they were training, but the gravity room had already been checked and was clearly not in use. Perhaps they had gone somewhere else to train, but she had no idea how to contact them if that was the case. If either of them had a phone, she did not know about it.

Suddenly, she heard a noise coming from the floor above them, in the residential wing. "Oh!" she gasped with a start. "Those brats _did_ abandon me!" She made a beeline for the nearest staircase, eager to reach her family.

/

Vegeta touched down on the balcony of his son's bedroom. He shifted his son into one arm, using his free hand to pull the sliding glass door open and allow them inside. Trunks was still out cold as he was placed on his bed, and the kid looked like hell. His face, his upper arms, his chest and shoulders, they were all covered in freshly scabbing skin. Vegeta frowned as he realized that the clothes his son wore were shredded and coated with blood and even a few strips of flesh.

The elder prince stepped into his son's private bathroom and grabbed a bowl and towel from a cabinet under the sink. The bowl was filled with warm water and soap before Vegeta returned to the bedroom with it and the towel. Vegeta stripped his son's clothing off until the boy was in his underwear before sponging off the damaged flesh. Slowly and methodically, he cleaned off every self-mutilated part on his son's body. He took care to ensure that the very fresh scabs on the skin were not damaged in any way as he removed the dried and flaking blood.

The fluid in the bowl that he dipped the rag in slowly began to take on a pink hue as more and more blood was washed away. The boy had really done a number on himself. The sides and back of his neck in particular had been brutally torn into. As he continued to cleanse the wounded body, Vegeta considered the fact that the boy had already been partially healed. Gaging by the depth of the wounds on Trunks' neck, combined with the amount of healing that had likely been done, Vegeta realized just how close his son had been to accidentally committing suicide. Even with the healing, the senior prince was able to see the damaged arteries.

"Holy shit," he muttered, leaning in for a closer look at those particular wounds. Trunks had been unbelievably fortunate to have Gohan to stop him. If those wounds had gone only a slight bit further, there would have been nothing they could have done to save him.

His actions drew to a near total halt as he stared at the damaged throat. Trunks had been on the verge of total self-destruction, and Vegeta had been utterly oblivious to it. According to the timetable that Gohan had given him, Vegeta concluded that he had been asleep as his son had gone into the frenzy.

_How did I miss that?_ he wondered. _How did I miss something of that magnitude?_

It was disturbing. It bothered him so much that he barely noticed when the woman knocked on the door and let herself in.

"Hello?" she called, slowly entering the room. "How are my boys doing?" When she was half way in, Bulma gasped, staring in horror at the scene before her. "What happened?"

Vegeta did not say a word, focusing solely on tending to his son's wounds. Most of them were cleaned out, but several would need to be bound and covered it they were to heal properly. The elder prince was considering taking the boy back up to the Lookout and forcing the sprout to heal him fully. The injuries to the child's face were so severe that there was a chance they could leave lasting marks and leave him disfigured.

_Perhaps if I brought sedatives along_, he thought, _I could stop him before another spike could get too dangerous..._

He was snapped out of his thoughts by the feeling of the woman's fist hitting him in the shoulder. "Hey!" she snapped. "If you don't tell me what the hell happened to my son right now, I will find a way to rip your head off!"

"Power surge," he numbly answered, returning to his work.

Bulma glared at him, frustrated and furious. "Is that all you have to say?" she demanded. "My son looks like he just got mauled by a bear, and you can only offer me two damn words?"

Vegeta shrugged, keeping his eyes on the wounds he cleaned. "His energy spiked and he nearly self-destructed. This is the aftermath."

The heiress clenched her fists at her side, but understood that it was a moment for reason, not a screaming match. She loved a good verbal spar, but in front of Trunks as he lay injured was not the time or place. She took a calming breath and knelt down by her son's body. "How?" she asked, slightly more composed.

Fighting through the numb haze he was still caught in, the prince continued along with his task. "When a Saiyan begins adolescence," he neutrally explained, "it is not uncommon to have random surges in power. It can lead to wild, erratic behavior, but usually leads to no real danger."

"Usually?" she softly asked.

Vegeta barely nodded in response. "In rare cases, energy levels begin to grow higher than the growing body can handle. It literally can tear a body apart from the inside out." He frowned, rinsing off the towel. "It is a sensation that is miserable to go through."

Bulma spared a glance in his direction. "Did it happen to you?"

"Not in adolescence."

There was clearly a story there, but Bulma did not dare to ask about it. There was something in his tone that spoke louder than his words, something dark and dangerous. She was convinced that he was an ally, but the way those words were spoken reminded her of who he really was.

It was an odd sensation that washed over her. She had been so scared of him just a few days earlier, thinking he was an enemy come to kill them, but in that short amount of time, she had found herself completely unafraid of him. That moment, with that tone, brought a trace of that fear coursing through her system.

"What can we expect?" she asked, trying to keep them on topic.

The frown deepened on Vegeta's face. "We cannot be certain," he admitted, "because these circumstances have only occurred once before in known history. We have estimates at best."

Bulma nodded, studying the child's injuries. "What, exactly, caused this?" she asked. "These wounds look self inflicted to me."

"They are," the prince confirmed. "One of the common side effects of a power surge is an annoying sensation of itching. The higher the spike..."

"...the worse the itch," Bulma reasoned out for herself. "And if it got bad enough..."

"...then anything will be done to alleviate it," the prince finished. "And one is lucky if that wretched sensation is the worst of the experiences."

Bulma nodded again, considering the information. "So, during a particularly bad power surge, common sense and logic would easily bow out in the face of overwhelming physical sensation. Any motion that would lessen that feeling would be repeated constantly until relief permanently came to pass, so it is quite possible for a subject to unknowingly cause a fatal injury."

"Correct," Vegeta affirmed, wrapping the largest injuries on Trunks' neck.

A look of horror swiftly formed on the scientists face. "How do we stop him from doing it again?" she demanded. "What can we do to stop another power surge?"

"Nothing."

"There has to be something!" she screamed, pushing wildly against his shoulder. "You can't just tell me that we have to sit by and watch him suffer!"

"What would you have me tell you?" he demanded, whipping around and glaring at the woman. "Do you wish to hear that we have a magic potion that will cease this? If that is so, then you better start gathering the dragon balls!"

Bulma shoved at the Saiyan, grunting as she realized how useless that gesture was. "You insensitive bastard!" she yelled, fisting her hands at her sides. "How could you be so cold!"

"First of all, you are clearly lacking the majority of your knowledge of me if _this_ is surprising behavior to you," he bit out. His eyes shifted to her chest and he smirked. "And secondly, I am clearly warmer than you."

The heiress' eyes widened before she looked down at her chest. After getting the shirt on in the bedroom, she had not bothered to put on a bra. That fact was extremely obvious to anyone with working eyes.

"Ugh!" she shrieked, kicking at the prince. "I can't believe I was ever attracted to you!"

Vegeta's eyes narrowed angrily, and he opened his mouth to retaliate, but he was stalled by a motion he felt under his fingers. His gaze shifted down to the bed, and he watched as Trunks began to squirm slightly.

Trunks groaned in his sleep, slowly coming back to the realm of consciousness. The pain caused by both his self-inflicted injuries and the unseen damage done by his overloaded energy was gradually clawing its way into his still hazy mind, and it was not a pleasant sensation. He began to shift as he very slowly opened his eyes.

"What happened?" he croaked out, squinting at his parents.

Vegeta finished with the bandage he was working on. "Power surge," he calmly answered.

Offering a very small nod, Trunks closed his eyes again. "Is it always going to hurt this much?" he asked.

As his mother quickly responded with, "No," his father firmly stated, "It is likely."

Bulma glared at the Saiyan, but she addressed Trunks with a calm, loving voice. "We're not completely sure," she told him, leaning in and ruffling his lavender hair. "But right now you need to get some rest, and your father and I will talk about the best ways to help you."

Warily, Trunks opened his eyes and glanced at his father. He was young, but he was more than experienced enough to know that his mother sugar coated anything she could. His father, on the other hand, told the truth, and often in the bluntest way possible. If his mother was being reassuring, and his father was saying it was going to hurt, then it was going to hurt. A lot.

His lower lip began to quiver, and he fought to keep the tears from rolling from his eyes. He did not want it to hurt. He did not want to feel pain. It scared him, and he quickly lost the battle and began to cry.

Bulma quickly wrapped her arms around the boy in a maternal gesture. "Oh, honey, you'll be okay," she gently assured. "I promise that your father and I will find a way to help you through this, okay?"

Trunks shifted his eyes from his mother to his father, looking for the honest answer. His breath stilled in his chest, searching the man's face for any reaction at all. Vegeta's face was utterly neutral. There was nothing at all to indicate if there was anything at all that was able to be done.

Eventually he gave up and offered a nod in response, and he managed to calm himself down enough to stop the tears. "Okay," he finally said, letting out a breath he had not known he was holding. He had not been told that things would be fine, but if his father was not telling his mother to 'stop filling him with ridiculous notions because you are too soft hearted and weak to accept reality', then at least he stood a fighting chance.

"Can I have something to eat?" he asked, settling back against his mother's embrace. "I'm really hungry."

"Your body recently metabolized nutrients at a significantly higher rate than it is used to," Vegeta explained, getting to his feet. "It should be replenished quickly."

Bulma rolled her eyes, but she offered her son a gentle squeeze before sliding away from him. "In other words, yes, we'll get you something to eat."

Trunks offered his leaving parents a small smile as he lay back against his pillows. "Thanks," he weakly answered. "You guys are the best." He closed his eyes and his smile grew wide. "I'm really happy you two are back together."

Bulma froze in her footsteps. She knew that Trunks had been having a rough time, but she had not considered that something like having both parents together could help him so much. Her parents had always loved one another and had always had a happy marriage. She had never experienced first-hand how hard it was for a child to watch their parents being torn apart.

"Get some rest, sweetie," she gently said, smiling down at him. "We'll take care of everything." With Vegeta taking the lead, the two of them left the child's room.

Bulma closed the door softly and turned her sights to the retreating Saiyan. "Hey, wait up!" she hissed, running after him. He did not stop, but she did slow down and allow her to catch up. "So what are we going to do?"

"I will increase the intensity of his training to give him the strength he needs to handle that amount of power," he bluntly stated, "and you will make sure that fast working sedatives are readily available to neutralize his energy reservoirs."

Nodding along, Bulma asked, "What else?"

"That is all."

"No!" the heiress fought back, firmly standing across from the Saiyan. "That's not good enough! Now, what else can we do?"

"Nothing!" Vegeta shouted back. "There is nothing that can be done, you shrill harpy! Now go do your end of the deal and leave me to do mine."

Bulma swung her hand, trying to slap the man before her right in the face, but her wrist was caught. "You miserable son of a bitch!" she shouted, failing in her attempt to wrench her wrist away. "How can you talk like that with you _son_ in there, lying in that terrible state? How can you be so cold?"

"There is nothing to be done," the prince firmly repeated. "There is nothing that can stop it, there is nothing that can make it go away, and there is nothing that will get him out of it. I, for one, choose to face reality head on. You would be wise to do the same."

Growling, Bulma tried once again to free herself. "Throwing in the towel is not facing reality, you coward!"

Vegeta's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I am no coward, woman," he threatened, "and you would do well to remember that."

"Or what?" the heiress challenged. "You're going to tell me that you'll blast me or something?"

Vegeta dropped her wrist and stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest. "What if I did?"

Bulma's eyes were enormous in an instant. Staggering back several steps, she looked up at her estranged lover with horror radiating off of her. Subconsciously her hands came up in a defensive stance. "You really are still a monster, aren't you?"

"Like you give a damn about the answer I give," the prince snarled back. "You are going to presume the worst about me and hold me to your ludicrous ideas, so why don't we save ourselves some time and go our own ways now?"

With only a brief moment of hesitation, Bulma turned and ran down the hallway. She wanted her life back, but she had to get away from that monster. How could she possibly have been with such a creature? What could she have been thinking?

And how could she possibly help her son?

Pumping her legs as hard as she could, the heiress ran as fast as possible for her bedroom. She slammed her door shut, locked it tight, and shoved a chair in front of it as though such measures could keep out a Saiyan.

Everything was falling apart, and Bulma was losing hope that it would ever be right again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Note**: If you read Chapter 4 when it was first posted and have not reread it lately, please, oh please, go back and read it again. I accidentally posted a draft instead of the final when I first put it up, and this chapter will make absolutely no sense at all if you try to take it from where that version left off.

I apologize for my foolishness. Have a nice day.

/

Bulma knelt behind the door, crying quietly to herself. This was not what she had wanted when she decided to get her old life back. Her son was dying, her lover was a monster, and everyone seemed to think that it was all perfectly normal. Not only was her personal life an absolute wreck, but she could not even take solace in her work. It was far too soon, given the nature of her accident, for her to be up and about without a senzu bean, and she knew better than to try to bluff her way through it. As such, she could not set foot in her main labs for at least a few months.

She was not sure which was hurting more, the situation with Trunks or the one with Vegeta. Her only child, who she had barely started to get back into her life, seemed to be on the brink of destruction from a force she seemingly could not stop. If she had ever known a significant amount about how ki worked with a body before, it was long gone to her now. She had absolutely no idea how to create a sedative that focused on ki, and from the sound of the information she had been given, Trunks might die if she did not figure one out.

And Vegeta…she shuddered just thinking about him. An hour earlier she had slept peacefully in his arms, basking in the glory of their passionate glow. He really was as gifted in bed as she seemed to remember him being. But everything else about him was wrong. He was cold and callous whenever they were not being intimate, and he seemed almost completely disinterested in forming a romantic bond with her. Through her hazy memories, she fought, trying to get a single concrete image in her mind of a time they were truly happy with one another, but she could come up with nothing outside of the bedroom.

There was nothing there. Nothing at all. She had enough to understand that once upon a time she _had_ considered him an adequate life partner, but there was nothing concrete to back it up. No memories of secret told, no recollections of emotional bonding, not even a hint existed that they ever once had something besides raw passion. As much fun as he could be in that arena, Bulma knew she needed more. What bothered her the most, though, was the sinking sensation that she had somehow _settled_ with him.

Perhaps there never was anything with Vegeta beyond the sex. Perhaps that was why she could not pull up any memories of them. Even when she had flat out asked Vegeta how their relationship had started, all she had walked away with were torrid stories of what led to the first time they slept together. It was not a secret to her that her pregnancy with Trunks had not even slightly been planned. It seemed very possible in her mind that she could have gotten pregnant with Vegeta's child and then forced a relationship between them because of it. In fact, it seemed like the only plausible explanation to her.

That had to be it. They had to have agreed on a passionate fling that had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. She knew that he had left while she was pregnant. That much had been made clear by her mother. Why he had come back was still hazy, but Bulma could be honest enough with herself to admit that she would have fought to make it work out of a sense of propriety. While she had never been a strictly traditional girl, Bulma still felt that it was wrong to have a child with someone without a real relationship being there.

Calming down slightly, Bulma could not stop the small smile at the irony. Sex without a real relationship was alright, but having a child was not. Logic clearly had not been her strong point when she had arrived to that conclusion. _If Step B cannot occur without the completion of Step A_, she mused, _and Step B would cause undesirable results, then the logical conclusion is to not complete Step A_. With a little giggle, she playfully whined to herself, "But Step A is so much fun!"

Feeling a little better, the heiress got to her feet and brushed off her leggings. "Okay," she quietly spoke to herself, "you've got a sick kid in that room who needs something nourishing to eat and lots of love it he's going to get better. Sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself is not going to get anything done, so shut up, nut up, and just do it." She paused slightly as she reached for the locks, wondering where that little speech had come from, but she shrugged it off. She was literally trying to relearn her life. Things were bound to surprise her once in a while.

With new determination in her step, Bulma made her way to the kitchen. Her son needed her, and she would not let him down.

/

"Wake up, boy," Vegeta commanded, pushing his son's shoulder.

Trunks groaned, nuzzling into his pillow. "Goten, just let me sleep five more minutes."

Vegeta snorted. "I am not the little idiot," he firmly corrected, shaking the boy again. "Now wake up."

Letting out another groan, Trunks slowly opened his eyes. "Oh, Dad!" he responded with a start. He winced, the pain of his injuries really settling in. "Ow…"

"Don't move," the elder prince instructed, reaching down. "Aggravating your wounds further will not lead to anything good." Slowly, he gathered the boy up in his arms and adjusted him for comfort. When Trunks looked at him with great confusion in his eyes, Vegeta rolled his own. "You require the assistance of the sprout to heal fully," he explained. "I do not trust your low amount of remaining power to get you there without you blacking out."

"Oh," Trunks quietly responded, desperately trying not to whimper further in pain. "Okay."

Vegeta flew them silently up to the Lookout, not at all surprised to find both Gohan and Piccolo waiting for them. "Don't you two have better things to do with your lives?" he growled.

_Yes, _Gohan thought, _but as the world seems to be falling apart, I'll just have to live life later_.

"We were simply reminiscing," Piccolo smoothly lied, knowing his pupil could not perform that act well. "We were not expecting you to be returning, at least not so soon."

"Hn," Vegeta growled, not particularly believing them but too tired to bother fighting them. "Where's the sprout?"

Piccolo's eyes narrowed. "Dende is the Guardian of this planet," he sternly lectured. "You would do well to treat him with respect."

"He is a seventeen year old Namekian who got the job because no one else was up for it," the Saiyan countered. "He holds no powers beyond that common with his people, and I am not going to treat an obvious mortal as though he was a god. Now where the hell is he?"

"I am here," Dende responded, emerging from the palace. Nervously, he glanced at Trunks. The boy was awake, but gauging by the way he curled in his father's arms and leaned in to the man's chest, he was clearly in pain. "Do you wish for the process to be completed?"

Vegeta nodded, placing his son gently on the ground. Without a word he took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring down and analyzing what was being done. "Go slowly," he bit out.

Dende swallowed, but he nodded along. He understood perfectly well that they were worried about another power surge, and he was hardly foolish enough to question it. It would be extremely draining on his own energy reserves, but the young guardian knew that it was an extremely delicate situation. Taking a deep breath, he slowly began his work.

Rocking nervously on his feet, Gohan hesitantly said, "So…how are things?"

The Saiyan beside him growled deeply, but he gave no direct verbal response.

"I was just wondering," the teenager went on, failing miserably in his attempt to maintain a casual tone, "because, you know, so much has happened in the last few weeks, and it's just been so crazy, hasn't it? I know our family has been adjusting a lot, so I would guess that yours is even more…"

If the poor boy had been paying any real attention to the prince at his side, he would have noticed the growl growing increasingly louder and recognized it as a sign of impending danger. However, he was so anxious that he missed it completely.

"…and I was just wondering if you guys needed anything," Gohan kept going, a noticeable line of sweat forming on the back of his neck. "Um, not that you couldn't handle everything just fine on your own," he stammered out, "but sometimes it doesn't hurt to have an extra set of hands on deck, and I would be happy to help in any way possible…"

That was as far as the poor boy got before a very solid fist slammed into his cheek. With a mild cry, Gohan whipped around, righting himself and falling into an automatic defensive stance.

But that second swing never came. Gohan quickly realized that Vegeta was not even looking at him any longer. In fact, it seemed like the prince was no longer aware of his presence at all. He just stood there, staring at the child, keeping a very close eye on the healing.

Every few seconds Trunks would let out a very small whimper, but the child fought to keep it to himself. His father did not have a high tolerance for signs of weakness, and the boy did not want to risk showing any of them. The wounds closed up little bit by little bit as Dende took his time with his work, and soon enough they were gone completely. With a reluctant look on his face, Trunks began to flex the muscles in his hands, making sure they were okay. Slowly, he reached for his neck. That had certainly been where the worst of the damage had occurred, and much to the boy's relief, all the damage seemed to be gone.

A large smile broke out on the child's face, and he literally jumped to his feet. "Sweet!" he cheered. Giving a thumbs-up to Dende, he gushed, "You're the best!"

The young guardian laughed. "Trunks, it's nothing," Dende assured. "As far as effort is concerned, I basically put a bandage on a skinned knee."

"Oh, dude, this is way better than that!" the boy cheered. "I don't know if you gave it a little extra juice or what, but I feel great!" A wild laugh escaped him, and Trunks began to power up. Gohan made a move forward, hoping to stop the boy, but Piccolo placed a hand on his pupil's shoulder.

"Leave him be," he gently counseled. "This is how he will learn to be in control of his new power, just as it was with you." When Gohan shot him a nervous look, Piccolo shook his head. "Should he give any indication of losing control, we are here to step in. Until then, leave him be."

Gohan frowned, but did as he was told. His own experiences left scarring memories of horrible pain and loss of control over ever part of his life. Even his thoughts had not seemed to be his own during the change. It was a miserable experience that he desperately wanted to keep the younger ones from ever experiencing.

However, he had never stood on the watcher's side before. They had. While he had fallen apart, the others had been there, ready to help and able to remember. Gohan's memories were mostly of his own pain. Vegeta and Piccolo would remember much more clearly what it looked like from the outside, and if they were allowing it, Gohan would have to trust them.

As Trunks laughed joyfully, Vegeta walked around, forcing his way into his son's direct line of sight. "Do you wish to put this new power to the test?" he deliberately goaded the boy.

The grin grew wider, and Trunks nodded eagerly. "For real?" he giddily asked. "Awesome!" The boy dropped into a fighting stance, eager to put his father to the test.

But Vegeta shook his head. "Not like this," the father firmly stated. "You have not replenished your reserves yet. When you have eaten, you may try it."

Trunks frowned, and his energy wavered slightly. However, he did manage to power down with moderately good control. "Fine," he relented. "But then we train?"

"Then we train," Vegeta affirmed. "Now shut up and get over here, we are going home."

"Dad, I feel great!" Trunks protested. "I can fly on my own now! Watch!"

Before anyone else could get a word in edgewise, the child launched himself off the edge of the Lookout, laughing wildly on his way. He began to power up again, but unlike last time, the energy did not come. His eyes grew wide as he tried harder, desperate, but it still did not come. And the energy he had been feeling when he jumped dissipated in a matter of seconds. As the ground rapidly approached, Trunks screamed, suddenly very aware of how weak he was.

There was nothing there. Nothing at all to save him, no matter how hard he tried to summon it. The ground grew closer and closer, and for the first time in his life, Trunks was terrified of the fall.

Just barely aware of it, Trunks noticed an arm wrapping around his body. The fall lost speed, but did not appear to be stopping. Fearfully, the boy glanced up, realizing that his father had caught up with him. He did not understand why they had not just stopped, but as scared as he still was, Trunks could not manage to find the air to speak.

Only a few seconds later, they hit the ground. Hard. Vegeta bore the brunt of it, forcing himself to stick the landing, but even Trunks felt the shock. A small whimper escaped his throat, and he instinctively curled into his father's chest. "Dad?" he nervously asked. "Why didn't you fly?"

Vegeta gave no response at all, not even a change of breathing. The pureblood was too occupied with his own concerns about what had happened. He had known from the moment Trunks jumped that the boy would not have the energy left to pull up, but he had been genuinely thrown by his own lacking power. The haziness had never fully cleared in his mind, but somehow he had forgotten its existence. He tried to think back to the last time he had slept through a night or eaten a full meal, but he honestly could not remember.

"Dad?" Trunks tried again. "What's going on?"

Vegeta blinked, able to pull himself back into reality for a moment. He knew he had to offer an answer, but he could not think of one that would not sound weak. His mouth opened, without anything prepared, but he was thankfully interrupted by a new presence.

"Did you two seriously just jump from the Lookout?" Goku asked as he popped up in front of them. He glanced up the pole, barely able to see the holy ground at the top. "You know, I've always kind of wanted to try it. Was it fun?"

Trunks laughed, but his voice was clearly weak. "Yeah, it was great," he sarcastically responded. "Go try it."

Letting out a laugh of his own, Goku scratched the back of his head. "Maybe later," he said. "After all, you two left a pretty impressive crater here."

"Is there a reason you are here, Kakarot?" the elder prince sneered.

Goku blinked. "Oh, I felt every kind of coming and going from here, and your energies were all over the map, so I thought I was missing out on something. I just came to check it out."

"Fantastic," Vegeta bitterly huffed. "Listen, clown, you missed nothing and we are leaving." The prince turned to leave, but stalled as he felt a hand on his shoulder. "What the…"

Before he had time to finish his forming threat, Vegeta found himself standing in his own living room. "What the hell, Kakarot?" he growled.

"What?" Goku sincerely asked. "You said you were going, so I figured I could teleport you home. I just wanted to help."

"We do not need your help!" the prince shouted. "Now get the hell out of here!"

Goku shrugged and stepped back, seemingly unphased by the hostility presented toward him. "Oh, you've got family plans," he said. "Got it. Well, don't mind me, I'm heading out." He placed two fingers on his forehead and smiled. "Later, guys!"

As soon as the younger pureblood was gone, Trunks looked up at his father's face. "Um, you can put me down now."

Vegeta blinked, once again forcing his hazy mind to focus as best it could. While he had been scolding Kakarot, he had forgotten that he was still holding the boy. With a grunt, he tossed the child onto the couch. "You are not to move from that spot until told otherwise," he ordered. "Do you understand?"

Trunks smiled. He was weak, and he had been through a lot that day, but the last thing he remembered from his home was that his parents were working together again. As far as his young mind was concerned, that meant that things were going to be back to normal in no time at all. "Got it," he eagerly agreed. His stomach practically roared at him, and his cheeks quickly turned red. "Um, is there any chance the food will be ready soon?"

At that moment, Bulma entered the room. "Did I just hear Goku?" she asked, looking around. Her eyes landed on her son, and it took her a moment to figure out that he was healed. "Senzu bean?"

"Dende," the boy corrected. "Now, about that food…"

Bulma chuckled and walked over to her son, giving him a big hug. "Ready when you are, kiddo," she told him. "I'll send the bots in here if you like."

"Can I watch cartoons as I eat?" Trunks eagerly asked.

"Sure!" Bulma agreed, hugging him again. "You just rest right here and I'll take care of everything." She stood up and turned to do just that, but she hesitated when she caught Vegeta watching her. The fear she had felt earlier began to creep back through her soul, and she quickly turned to complete her mission, running away from him completely.

As Trunks settled in against the pillows, finally getting the rest he needed, Vegeta turned and left.

He would not be back for three days.


	6. Chapter 6

Bulma stood over her sleeping son, a troubled look on her face. Trunks had wolfed down about half of the food she had brought to him before passing out in front of the television. The boy was completely out, not even flinching as the characters on the scream began to scream and shoot at each other.

"What am I going to do with you?" she quietly asked, taking a seat on the arm of the couch. Raising a child seemed just so foreign to her still. Things that had once come to her instinctually were utterly foreign to her. And worst of all, Trunks seemed to be suffering from a potentially fatal ailment that she had absolutely no idea how to cure. "This isn't going to be easy, is it?"

The show that Trunks had been watching sprinted through its ending credits, and quickly a gossip show came on. Bulma reached for the remote, ready to turn off such trash, but she froze as she saw a picture of herself pop up on the screen. With her jaw slack, the heiress brought up the volume.

"New news from Capsule Corp," the perky blonde host chirped, smiling for the camera. "Reports are saying that CEO Bulma Briefs is showing strong signs of recovery. Weeks earlier, Briefs was involved in a car accident that many would have assumed to be fatal. Hours of surgery and round the clock care got her into stable condition, and after regaining consciousness and signs of improvement, the Briefs heiress was released into the care of her family."

Relaxing a little, Bulma sat back. It seemed like everything was under control.

"However," the blonde went on, "sources say that there have been indications that the heiress' memory may have been damaged in the accident. While there have not been specifics released yet, rumors are swirling about whether or not Briefs will be able to resume her duties as the head of the large corporation. Sources are telling us that several of the lower executives have been in talks to gain power within the organization now to avoid potential problems, should the damage done prove to take Briefs out of the equation as a leader."

Bulma was utterly baffled. They knew about her memory? They knew that she had that problem? Furious blood raced to her cheeks, and her fists clenched in anger. They were trying to take her empire away from her. They were trying to steal everything out from under her nose.

And she could not stand for that.

"Son of a bitch," she growled, getting to her feet. Furiously stomping to the kitchen, she snatched the phone off the wall and dialed her father's number. "What the hell?" she shouted, not bothering with a proper greeting. "Is it true? Are they really trying to boot me?"

"Oh, hello sweetie," Dr. Briefs casually greeted. He was well used to his daughter's greetings and was no longer shocked in the least bit by them. "Now, what seems to be the problem?"

Growling, Bulma kicked the kitchen wall. "Damn it, Dad, are people trying to take my power away from me?"

It was rare when the good doctor was at a loss for words, but he found himself struggling to answer his only child's question. "Um, well, you see, dearie," he hesitantly began, "you've just been through so much lately that maybe it would be in your best interest…"

"It's _true_?" the heiress hissed. "Daddy, how could they? How could _you_? Why would you do this to me?"

"Honey," the doctor sighed, slumping against his chair, "you know that we all love you very much. You are so smart, and so beautiful, and you're just brilliant at everything you try. But that little bump on the head just can't be ignored."

Bulma's rage slowly began to ebb away as she listened to her father. "What?" she quietly asked.

The good doctor let out another sigh. "You can't remember the last few years particularly well, sweetie," he explained. "Now, I know you've a very capable young lady, but you're missing a lot of things that have happened within the company. You don't even know half the executives anymore, let alone what we've been working on. Your knowledge as an engineer has been set back enormously. I have no doubts that you'll catch up eventually, but you're just not there right now."

Bulma felt as though she had been stabbed in the neck and was rapidly bleeding to death. How could her own father take away what was rightfully hers? It was _her_ company! She had _earned_ it! And they thought they could take it all away from her just because she had a little problem with her memory? "You can't do that," she growled.

"Now, sweetie," her father patiently explained, "this wouldn't be a permanent thing. It would just be to keep things going smoothly until you catch up."

"Are you freaking _kidding _me?" the heiress hissed. "Do you have any idea what could happen to this company if you take it out of the family? They'll take it public, Dad. They'll sell it off piece by piece and leave us totally open for infiltration and destruction."

Yet another sigh escaped the Briefs patriarch. "Honey, stop sounding like Vegeta for a moment and look at it from our side. I am not strong enough to run this company on my own anymore. Maybe I could have a couple years ago, but I just don't have it in me to do it now. And they already know about your little memory hiccup, and they're ready to use it against you. At least the way I am setting it up with out attorneys, you would be able to take it back eventually."

While his explanation did make sense, Bulma still felt the bitter string of betrayal. "You didn't even ask me."

On his end, Dr. Briefs shrugged. "You seemed a tad overwhelmed," he reasoned. "I thought you'd rather spend time with your son and your husband…"

"Hold on," Bulma interrupted, "my what now?"

"Your son and your husband," her father calmly repeated.

The phone dropped from Bulma's hand with a loud clunk, and it took several seconds for her to recover enough to pick it up off the floor. "Vegeta and I are married?"

"Well of course you are," the good doctor assured. "Have been for years."

"But…but I don't have a ring…"

"Not one you wear on a regular basis, no," her father affirmed. "You tried for a little while, but it kept getting in your way when you were working on a project, so you kept it in the same box Vegeta keeps his in. You have them, you just don't wear them."

She was shocked, completely stunned. It had been mentioned to her that she and the wild Saiyan had some form of sexual relationship with one another, and even that he had stuck around her for a decade. But married? To Vegeta?

He really agreed to do that?

"Dad, I'll call you back," the heiress firmly stated, hanging up before she got a response. Over the course of the past few days, she had been struggling with her thoughts of the temperamental prince. She could remember decently well that there had been a relationship between herself and the man, but there was nothing concrete there to back it up. And without anything more than the memory of having a feeling, the idea of actually being _married_ to him seemed unreal. Marriage was a serious commitment, one that she honestly could not picture Vegeta making.

Bulma ducked into the living room again, glancing at her worn out son. Trunks was still completely out, and looked like he was going to stay that way for a while. Confident that she had a little down time on her hands, Bulma slid up the staircase and into her bedroom. Her father had mentioned a box that the wedding rings were kept in, and she was damn determined to find it. If, of course, it actually existed.

As she began to go through the drawers of her vanity, it dawned on Bulma that her father could have easily been misled in his belief that his daughter was married. While Bulma's parents were very open minded about several things, they were quite traditional about many others. They probably pressured her to tie the knot when she had Trunks, and it was very possible that she had quickly gone out and bought a couple rings just to shut them up. It definitely seemed like something she would do.

One drawer at a time, she searched for the box her father had told her about. She would pull the drawer out, empty it on to the bed, and slowly reload it one item at a time to make sure that there was no way she could miss it. If those rings existed, and if there was any proof at all that they were really married, she was going to find it.

Soon enough, the vanity had been thoroughly searched with no results. She moved on to the first dresser, repeating the process meticulously. But once again, nothing was found. The next dresser was searched, and the drawers in the closet. Drawer after drawer, there was no ring box at all to be found.

When the last drawer had proven fruitless, the heiress shrieked and threw it across the room. Even though she had doubted their existence, and even though she was fairly certain that it had been a lie, a part of Bulma had been desperately hoping to find that symbol of union.

But there was nothing there. Apparently, it was all a hoax. And that made the heiress burn inside. The more she uncovered about her life with Vegeta, the less she liked about it. Not one memory with him involved an intimate moment. They were all either sex or fighting, and not the fun kind her family seemed to reference. _No,_ she thought, taking a seat on the corner of her bed, _that's not true._ There was one memory that was neither of those things. One that had played only once before in her mind, and she struggled to pull up at will.

It was after the battle with Cell. They had all gathered for one last party before Mirai Trunks had returned to his own timeline once and for all. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the party itself, save the slightly lowered sense of joy. After all, Goku had just sacrificed himself to save the world, and had requested to stay away. So there was a slightly higher hint of the gloomies than there normally was, but other than that, everything seemed fine. Gohan stuck with Piccolo and Krillen, Tien and Chaotzu did not even show up, and Yamcha stood a little too close to Bulma. Mirai had been perfectly polite, and after one last wave good-bye to everyone, he walked away.

As she looked back at that day, Bulma wondered why nothing had seemed off with Vegeta to her. He did not speak once during the party, but as he was staunchly anti-social, she had not thought anything of it. A few more days passed with his silence, but considering what the group had just gone through, Bulma had brushed it off. Again, he was a quiet man unless he had a demand to make or a fight to pick. A little silence was nothing.

The specifics were missing from her mind still, but Bulma could pull together that there was something amiss with him. There was just too much quiet for too much time. There should have been more there, and Bulma was well aware that there were large chunks to that story that were yet untold to her, but the instinct that followed it was unmistakable. There had been something horribly wrong with him. And it had gone on for a while.

It was the only memory that did not fit with the others. It was the only one that did not involve passion of some form. And quite frankly, it disturbed her a little bit.

"Vegeta," she sighed, laying back on the bed. What on earth was she going to do about him? The passion was still there. Hell, they had given testament to that a dozen times in the few days since their reconciliation. But beyond that passion, beyond that fire, beyond the sexual pleasure, she felt nothing for him. She may have loved him once, but that spark, the one that really mattered, was not there. It was not love.

But she also knew that she was not being fair to him. If her friends insisted that he was on their side, no matter how off it seemed to her, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. He had frightened her slightly earlier, but in retrospect, she had overreacted. And she had witnessed herself just what the tension between herself and her estranged lover was causing to their son. Trunks was caught in the middle of their firefight, and it was obviously more than he could take.

Sighing again, Bulma slowly opened her eyes and tried to form a plan of attack. Trunks was her first priority. He was her little boy, and he was in need of help that she could provide. The next thing that would need to be tackled, and as soon as possible, was Vegeta. Even if they were not married, they had at least been on amicable terms, and Bulma was calm enough to rationalize that such a relationship had to be reformed. They may no longer be a couple, but for the sake of their son, they would be at peace. When that at least was underway, she would get her company back. It was her empire, damn it, and she would be damned if she let someone else take it away.

Getting to her feet, Bulma brushed out her clothing and ran a hand over her peach fuzz. If Trunks was asleep, she could get started on trying to figure out what to do to help him just as soon as she had someone to keep an eye on her boy. _Vegeta's probably my best bet_, she thought, heading for the stairs. _He may not be thrilled with me right now, but even I'm sure that he'll help out with Trunks' problem._ She jogged down the steps, eager to get her plan under way. While she did pass through the living room, she was already fairly certain that he would not be in there.

She was correct, just as she was when she assumed that the kitchen would also be free of the Saiyan. Following her instincts, she went to the gravity room.

But that room was bare as well. Knowing that there were dozens of rooms to search and not enough information to narrow it down beyond those three rooms, Bulma went for the direct approach and activated the intercom.

"Vegeta, could you come to the living room to keep an eye on Trunks for me?" she asked. "I want to get started in my lab as quickly as I can."

She waited patiently for a minute before groaning. Clearly, he was still mad at her for her earlier behavior. "Please, Vegeta?" she tried again. "I'm sorry about what I did earlier. I just really want to get this started as soon as possible."

Again, there was no answer, and Bulma frowned. She tried a third time, but she was no longer surprised when she got no answer. "Must've left," she muttered, walking away from the device. "Damn it. I can't leave Trunks alone right now, and I don't want to call in a baby-sitting favor." Entering the living room again, she once more sat down on the arm of the couch. Gently, she brushed her fingers through the lavender hair of the sleeping boy. "Don't worry, kiddo," she softly told him, "I'll stay with you."

/

And she did stay with him, for three days straight, as he slept through his exhaustion. The boy did not get up once in all that time, but his breathing was regular and his heartbeat seemed normal. After the first twenty four hours, Bulma called Chi-Chi, worried for her son's health, but the younger mother assured her that it was perfectly normal. According to the brunette, Gohan had done the same thing after every major power surge, and that all she needed to do was make sure there would be plenty of food for when the boy woke up.

Even after being assured that her son was fine, though, Bulma worried. It simply did not seem normal to her. On top of that, she felt completely helpless. Unable to leave him unattended, she could not get to her lab to start trying to find a solution for his ultimate problem.

As the days ticked by, she found herself getting angrier and angrier at Vegeta. He had disappeared, and she had no way of getting a hold of him. If she had been truly desperate, she could have called the Son's and gotten Goku to hunt him down. However, she held a dozen cards that she would play before it got to that. Even if her memories of him were hazy, she knew well enough that sending Goku after Vegeta was just a disaster waiting to happen.

By the third day, Bulma was a wreck. She had not wanted to call for help beyond the check in with Chi-Chi, but she was not strong enough to carry her nine year old son up to his room. So she had brought blankets down to him to bundle him up, and she had slept on the floor beside the couch, never for more than a couple hours at a time. She had barely rested and barely eaten, and the stress was really getting to her.

As she put on what felt like her thousandth movie, a voice called from behind her, "You look like hell."

Bulma squeaked and jumped, completely caught with her guard down. "Geez, Vegeta, warn a girl when you're going to do that?"

The prince shrugged one shoulder, seemingly indifferent to her rage. Bulma opened her mouth to chew him out, but her anger was quickly replaced by curiosity and concern. She was not the only one that looked more than a little worse for wear. Vegeta was clearly exhausted. The dark bags under his eyes and the paleness of his skin were only slightly more obvious than the mild sway in his stance. Even as he tried to stand steady, it was clear that he could barely remain upright. He was wearing the same clothing he had been the last time they had seen each other, but parts of it were ripped and most of it had blood on it.

"Holy crap," the heiress muttered, approaching the Saiyan, "what the hell happened to you?"


	7. Chapter 7

Goku let out the breath he had not known he was holding. "He made it," he softly said, closing his eyes. "He got home."

"Thank goodness," Gohan sighed, his shoulders visibly relaxing. Beside him, Piccolo made the same motion, though not nearly as visibly. The demi-Saiyan drew in a deep breath and turned toward his father. "We need to figure out how this happened."

Piccolo shook his head. "There is nothing to figure out," he told the boy. "He systematically singled us out and picked fights with us, and we three obliged. That is as far as we need to go."

"No, something's wrong," Goku said, still looking in the direction the prince had disappeared off to. "I don't think he's been home for days, and you two had obviously given him a run for his money before he ever got to me." Slightly turning his head, he looked up at the tall green warrior nearby. "He went to you first, right?"

Piccolo nodded, but he did not give a verbal response until prodded by his former student. "He approached me two days ago," he explained. "We conversed briefly, he challenged me to a sparring match, and we fought for several hours. When we were through, he left peacefully." Again, Gohan shot his mentor a look, and Piccolo had to repress the urge to roll his eyes. "Fine, he was agitated. But he did not attempt any hostile movements toward me or mine, and as far as he is concerned, that is a peaceful exit."

"That must have been when he went to find me," Gohan added. "He caught me after my morning classes, and he was already scuffed up. He demanded a spar, and I figured that it would be better for my school and the general population if I went along with it somewhere else instead of, you know, saying no to him. He was…in a mood."

"Vegeta is always 'in a mood'," Piccolo responded.

But Gohan shook his head. "No, this was different," he insisted. "Normally he's just kind of, you know, grumpy. He's not going to have a long, meaningful conversation with you, but he's not going to take a swing at you without a reason. Yesterday, though, he was…I mean, it was almost as though…he was acting like…"

"Like he did when he first got here," Goku miserably finished. "I know. By the time he got to me, he had that look in his eye that he had back then." The Saiyan shivered slightly, remembering all too well what that first experience with the maniacal prince had been like. "I haven't seen that look in a while."

Beside him, Gohan frowned. "It hasn't been that long," he pointed out. "The last time we saw that look, he came back covered in the blood of what I can only assume is a thoroughly thrashed planet."

Though Goku did not want to admit it, he knew his son was right. Vegeta had borne that very look when he had them located to that now slaughtered world. It was a memory that Goku had actually been doing a fairly good job at repressing, but just having his son bringing it up made the seasoned warrior feel sick to his stomach. The prince had called it a necessary release. The others would have called it genocide.

And Goku honestly did not know which side of that argument he fell on. True, he did not condone killing, and he especially did not think that an unprovoked attack was honorable or even tolerable. But Vegeta really had been on the verge of snapping, and if pushed any further without that release, even Goku could not deny that there was a distinct possibility that the pent up rage would be taken out on the delicate Earth. To save their planet, it had been necessary.

But as he thought about it more, Goku's frown deepened. Vegeta dealt with his emotions violently. That was not news to anyone. But without a designated target, without a true enemy to be facing down, the prince turned to either anonymous victims or his own self destruction. And neither of those scenarios were good. Goku was not entirely convinced that he would not be asked to repeat his earlier gesture of taking the prince to a selected planet for destruction, and he did not know how to respond if he was. He hated the idea of giving Vegeta the necessary tools to massacre an unsuspecting people, but if it came down to that or the Earth…

"So, what do you think, Dad?" Gohan asked, placing a hand on his father's shoulder.

The warrior actually jumped with a small shriek. "Geez, Gohan, don't do that to me!"

With an apologetic look on his face, the teenager chuckled slightly. "Zoned out?"

"Duh!" Goku replied, his heart still beating as hard as his breathing from being startled. He shook his head, trying to calm himself back down. During the heat of battle, he was never caught with his guard down. However, outside of that particular environment, Goku had a tendency to get lost in his own thoughts. He was not by any means easily startled all the time, but it did happen more often than he cared to admit. "Now, what were we talking about?"

"Vegeta's state when he got to each of us," Gohan calmly explained. "He was apparently decently well contained when he got to Piccolo, was angrier when he left that, and angrier still when he got to me. He was definitely sporting more than a few bruises when he found me, and he had partially dried blood in the corner of his mouth. He must have gone straight to me after leaving Piccolo."

"So it would seem," the green warrior confirmed.

Letting out a depressed sigh, Goku shook his head. "I know he was fresh from you when he got to me," he told his son. "He was tired and bloody, but madder than a hornet in a kicked nest. He didn't even talk to me. He just swung for the fences." Slowly, he looked back in the direction that Vegeta had taken off in. "He took on all three of us with no breaks in between."

"He is trying to contain himself," Piccolo reasoned. "We all know that he is often fueled by rage, and that there needs to be an outlet for it. We should be thankful that he had the reasoning and rational state of mind to seek us out instead of going back to some of his more savage and brutal past habits."

Gohan crossed his arms, also looking up to the sky. "Do you think there was a specific order he hit us in?" he asked, mostly to himself. "I mean, I thought it was strange that he grabbed me from school instead of going to Dad…"

"Willingness to hit?" Goku guessed. "He seemed pretty ticked off by the time he got to me, and it sounds like he was pretty controlled when he got to Piccolo…"

"He would much rather take a swing at me than the boy," Piccolo interrupted. "I offend him more."

Gohan's eyes widened slightly. "He went by power level!" he realized. "He was planning on letting it all out, so he went from weakest to strongest so we could keep him in check as he let his anger out!" He whipped around to his father, a shocked look on his face. "That's why he saved you for last! He knew that he lost it, you could stop him!"

Goku frowned. Gohan's explanation made sense to him, but he was not sure that he liked it. Stopping Vegeta was not a job he wanted on his hands. Sure, the shorter Saiyan had been perfectly calm by the time he had left that last fight, but it had almost gotten out of hand. Just as he had a few days earlier, the prince had thrashed out wildly with no care for his own safety. Goku, however, had recognized the behavior and held back. He knew that doing so would enrage the prince, but he was genuinely afraid of inflicting the same damage. He had damn near killed the guy last time, and he desperately wanted to avoid making that mistake again.

But if Vegeta was going to rely on that for calming down, Goku was not sure he would be able to keep him contained. If Vegeta had been hell bent on inflicting as much damage as possible, Goku could have stopped him. But was the damage worth it? Vegeta had taken a lot of hard blows, physically and otherwise, as of late, and it was unclear what would happen if they did not let up. The younger Saiyan had a sinking feeling that if they did not find a better way to get Vegeta to calm down, it was going to end very, very badly.

As Gohan and Piccolo began to discuss their respective matches with one another, Goku continued to look to the sky. He wanted to help his fellow Saiyan, but he was not sure he could live up to what he was expected to do.

/

"Seriously, what the hell happened to you?" Bulma asked again, approaching the battered Saiyan. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Vegeta replied, keeping most of his anger hidden. "It was just a spar."

Bulma raised her barely existent eyebrow at her lover. "Um, I don't really remember what your spars are like. Do they usually end with you looking like you've been put through a meat grinder?"

The prince growled slightly at the insinuation that he had been defeated. "Would you like to see what Kakarot looks like for reference?"

But the heiress did not take on the fight. "Hey, if you tell me this is normal for you guys, then it's normal for you guys. I mean, it's not like I'd know the difference anyway." She casually shrugged one shoulder and leaned against the wall. "And since you don't strike me as the pathologically lying type, I really don't see the need to question it. If you were a manipulative son of a bitch, my friends wouldn't be telling me that you're, you know, one of us."

Vegeta did not give a response to that. He was too stunned by her suddenly relaxed attitude. There had been near unbearable tension in their home for so long that the sudden absence of it was almost disturbing. Even before the accident, and even after over ten years with one another, whenever he returned from a spar or training there was drama. Where was the screaming? Where was the demanding for him to be more careful? Where was the concern that he was going to go too far with his fighting?

It was extremely unsettling to him to see her taking his worn and bloody appearance so nonchalantly. It was weird for a usual spar, but he had been gone for three days and fighting the entire time, stopping only long enough to get to his next target. He had not even bothered to eat in all that time. If he were being perfectly frank with himself, he had taken it far further than he should have. If he did not get food and rest in the next hour or so, his body was going to start shutting itself down to compensate for the severe energy debt.

But the woman seemed to hardly notice. She had made a very small initial fuss, but it went on for under a minute and she had already turned away to go work on something else. That was not the woman he knew. The woman he knew would have screamed him stupid for pushing himself so far beyond his limits that it was dangerous, and at the same time she would bring food to replenish him and insisting that he sit down. _Angrily affectionate_ was the term she had always used to describe her unorthodox method of showing that she cared. It was a phrase that had privately amused him greatly. And it was those actions that had drawn him to her in the first place so long ago.

There had been a distance between them ever since the day of the accident, but to him, the gap between them had never seemed so wide as it did that day. A small voice began to whisper an idea in the back of his mind, and he roared at it to whither and die. The words the voice spoke were ones he refused to give credence to. There was no possible way that such a ridiculous notion could possibly come to pass. It was ludicrous, and he refused to acknowledge it.

Meanwhile, Bulma had returned to her spot beside the couch. "He's been out all this time," she gently said, running her fingers through her son's soft lavender hair. "I called Chi-Chi and asked her about it, but she said that Gohan went through the same thing and that I shouldn't worry. It's hard, though. Trying not to worry, I mean. I don't know about you, but when I tell myself to not let something get to me, I tend to flip about it ten times worse than I normally do."

Vegeta said nothing, but he did walk to the same side of the furniture that his family was on.

"It just seems weird to me, you know?" Bulma went on, glancing up at her estranged lover. "I mean, sleeping for three days straight? You'd think he'd need to eat or something. Especially when you think about how hungry he was before he conked out. I know Chich told me that this is normal, but I swear, that boy does not wake up in the next twenty four hours, I'm going to…"

"Talk so loud you could raise the dead?"

Both adults snapped their heads down to the couch, where Trunks was slowly opening his eyes. "Oh, honey!" Bulma exclaimed, grabbing his face with both hands. "How are you? Are you okay?"

Trunks smiled weakly up at his mother. "Hungry," he told her with a small chuckle. "You think you could help me fix that?"

"Of course!" Bulma replied, hopping to her feet. "Give me a minute and I'll bring you a feast!"

As he watched his mother disappear into the kitchen, Trunks laughed with what little energy he had. "Mom? Successfully making a feast?"

Vegeta crossed his arms and sat at the far end of the couch. "There's a first time for everything," he grimly said, settling his weight. With his expression serious, he caught his son's eye. "How are you feeling?" he demanded.

"Fine," Trunks quickly answered, though his smile suddenly looked far more forced.

Vegeta's eyes narrowed at his son. "You can't bullshit me, boy," he lectured. "Now, while your overly sensitive mother is out of the room, how are you feeling?" 

"Nauseous," Trunks answered, not even waiting for his father's sentence to finish. He knew better than to try to keep anything from the man. "And kinda jittery. And it feels like someone took a buzz saw on a walking tour through my skull." The boy glanced over his shoulder, making sure that his mother was still out of earshot in the kitchen before turning back to his father. "And…and I had a dream," he softly added. "A…a bad one."

While Vegeta was never one who particularly gave a damn about what someone's subconscious was telling them, the look on the boy's face encouraged him to ask, "What was it?"

Once more, Trunks checked to ensure that his mother remained out of range before talking. "I was playing in the park," he quietly began, looking at the blanket on his lap. "And there were some other kids there. You know," he said, dropping his voice and looking up, "human ones."

The father nodded, but gave no other response.

"We were playing tag," the child went on, lowering his eyes again. "And it seemed fine until I realized that I couldn't keep up with them. It was wrong, you know? They're just humans. They shouldn't be even a little hard to catch. So I ran harder and harder, but they were always, like, just out of reach."

Without being aware of it, Trunks brought his hand out, imitating his action from the dream. "They were right there, but I couldn't reach them. I ran and I ran and I ran, but they were just not…I couldn't get them. And they laughed at me, and I got…I got mad, Dad."

"Trunks, there is nothing wrong with feeling anger, particularly in a dream," the elder prince counseled.

The child trembled slightly and shook his head. "No, Dad, this was…it was different. Like, _bad_ different."

Vegeta raised an eyebrow, silently daring his son to go on.

Trunks shook his head again, and his tiny fists clenched on the blankets. "I was so mad at them," he quietly continued, his breath trembling at the memory. "I yelled and I screamed at them, and they kept laughing at me. And I was so mad that I…that I…" Tears quietly began to roll down the young prince's cheeks, and with his blue eyes shining with them, he looked his father in the eye. "I killed them, Dad," he whispered. "I killed them all. And it was fun."

At that moment, Bulma entered the room again, an enormous tray of food balanced in her arms. "Okay, I grabbed whatever I could that was premade," she announced, barely managing to balance her load, "but once I put this baby down, I can go right back and cook you some nice, hot…" It was as far as she got before she saw her son's tears. "Oh, God, Trunks!" The tray was dropped in an instant, and the heiress ran as fast as she could toward her crying son.

"No," Vegeta commanded, moving between mother and son faster than either could see. He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a serious look. "You'll get hurt."

"But…but," Bulma stammered, looking at the hardened mask of the man before her. She desperately wanted to comfort her son, but it only took a second for her to realize that Vegeta was right. Trunks was clearly upset, and he had more than enough power to hurt her accidentally. "But I want to help him," she spoke, looking beyond him to the boy.

"Let him rest," he firmly told her, guiding her away. "He will eat, and he will rest, and then you can coddle him until he is sick of it and makes a break for it."

Bulma wanted to protest, but she felt that perhaps it was not a battle to fight. Fighting had gotten her son in that position in the first place, and she would do anything to keep from adding to his troubles. With a small nod, she crossed her arms and took a step back. "Just let me know as soon as he calms down, alright?" she softly asked.

Vegeta stood, stunned, as she left the room again. She left. She just left. Her son was falling apart, and she just _left_? Bulma had never shied away from even the worst of Trunks' temper tantrums, no matter how harshly he would warn her to keep distance.

And Trunks had placed him on a situation he had never seriously contemplated before. Dreams of violence and massacre were not uncommon in Saiyan children, particularly in ones that were breaking new levels of power. But Trunks had been blabbing about his dreams his whole life, and none had ever come close to that level of violence. Visions of that magnitude were common to the elder prince, normally either right before or right after a planet purge. He had reveled in the destruction, and to him those dreams were sweet moments of joy. But Trunks was not a warrior. Trunks was a child. An _innocent_ child. He had never participated in, or even _seen_, something like the slaughter of children.

As Trunks continued to cry, Vegeta sat back down on the couch, only partially watching. The voice was whispering again. He tried to shut it out, but it refused to go away. It was not loud, but it was persistent. Like an echo through his skull, it ricocheted around his mind. Vegeta clenched his jaw and exhaled slowly through his nose, trying to will it away.

But that only made it worse.


	8. Chapter 8

Vegeta shook his head, desperately trying to focus. He had barely been functional when he had gone to fetch Trunks for a spar days earlier, and he had not rested or eaten once since then. Everything was becoming a mottled blur, and he knew that he had less than an hour to give his body what it needed before things got ugly. His body was so deprived that it was actually starting to shake with small tremors.

Barely able to make sense of the world around him, the prince could determine that his son was still crying on the couch. He knew that there was some sort of procedure for getting the boy to stop that, but outside of threats and bribery, Vegeta was not sure how to accomplish that goal. Whenever Trunks had been worked up, and the woman had been unavailable, Vegeta had always been able to fall back on one of those two tactics. However, the situation did not seem to warrant his usual practices, leaving the senior prince at a loss.

Unsure of what to do next for his son, but being well aware of how quickly his body was failing him, Vegeta reached out and grabbed one of the snacks Bulma had brought out a few minutes earlier. It was not much, and it certainly lacked the nutrients and calories he needed, but if nothing else it could buy him a few extra minutes to form a plan. The only things immediately available were prepackaged junk foods and the kitchen fruit bowl, and that would have to do.

His stomach rioted as he swallowed, furious at the feeble attempt to provide real food, but the prince pushed on. Pitiful food was better than no food, and with the adrenaline from his battles with Kakarot and his friends dying down, Vegeta's body was crashing too fast to get anything more substantial.

After several minutes of consuming what was readily available to him, Vegeta could finally feel the tremors subsiding. He was still in danger, but it was no longer as critical. Glancing to his side, he noticed that Trunks' sobs had died down and that the boy was on the verge of falling back to sleep. "Oh no you don't," he grumbled, hauling the boy up into a seated position. "You don't get to close your eyes again until you get some real food into your system."

"I'm so tired," the little boy whined pitifully. "I'm really hungry, but I just want to go back to sleep."

"Tough," his father commanded, giving the boy a firm shake. Trunks' body had gotten the rest it had needed, and the time had come to supply it with nutrition. "You are going to get to your feet and walk around this room until your mother gives you _real_ food. You got that?"

Trunks nodded, but he began slumping back against the couch. With a feeble noise, he felt his father's strong hand grasp him by the scruff of the neck, and before he could truly register what was going on, the boy was deposited on his feet.

"March," Vegeta commanded, giving the boy a mild shove.

The noise that escaped Trunks was indiscernible, but even without being fully awake he followed his orders. As he began to walk in circles around the living room, Vegeta shakily got to his own feet and made his way to the kitchen.

"You better get that boy his food soon," he informed the heiress, sliding as smoothly as he could into one of the kitchen chairs. "He will be falling asleep again soon, and your window of opportunity will be lost for days and he will run the risk of real damage."

"I'm on it," Bulma quickly replied, not even sparing the Saiyan a glance as she pulled a large bowl out of the microwave. "I know this isn't great, but the fastest thing I could think of that was high calorie was chili," she said, turning around with the enormous bowl. "I can get him started on this, and then I'll be able to get something better going. Oh, and I put a rush order on whatever 'The Usual' is at the place on speed dial seven, which is apparently labeled as our son's favorite eatery on the phone."

As the aroma wafted toward the Saiyan prince, Vegeta found himself sorely tempted to steal his son's food. His body cried out for sustenance, and even the pitiful amount of meat in the dish his woman carried seemed amazing. While Bulma walked out of the room to deliver the food to their son, Vegeta inadvertently cracked part of the kitchen table as he forced himself to stay put. He forced himself to stare at the blank wall of the kitchen until he was sure she was gone before unsteadily jumping to his feet and making a break for the refrigerator.

In the other room, Bulma watched Trunks complete another lap of the living room. "Gee, who knew my son was a zombie?" she gently teased, holding out the bowl. Knowing how Goku usually reacted to food, she was not at all surprised to watch the half lidded eyes of the boy roam toward the food. "Come and get it!"

Trunks did not need to be told twice. Without even allowing his mother to hand him a spoon, the child took the bowl and tipped it, funneling it into his mouth as quickly as he could. It only took a few seconds for the bowl to be emptied and for Trunks to greedily lick at what remained in the bowl.

"Um, I take it you want seconds?" Bulma nervously asked with a chuckle. She had seen Goku eat with remarkably poor manners, but what she could remember of Trunks gave no indication that he did the same. The display was slightly shocking.

Giving only a grunt for an answer, Trunks handed the cleanly licked bowl back to his mother. He wanted more food, and he wanted it immediately. As the stunned mother took the bowl, Trunks turned his focus to the remaining bags of crackers and cookies from the first tray and attacked them with ferocity.

"Holy crap," Bulma muttered, watching the wrappers fly. "Um, I'll go make the next round of this, and I ordered out for a ton of food that should be delivered pretty soon. Does that sound okay to you?" There was a mild grunt coming from her son, and Bulma smirked. "I'll take that as a yes." She turned around to head back into the kitchen, but the telltale sound of the deliveryman buzzing had her hanging a U-turn. "Hey, look at that!" she laughed, dropping the bowl on the coffee table. "It got here faster than we thought!"

Bulma kept her son company as he feasted on everything he could get his hands on, and she found herself smiling broadly as she watched him. While the display of food inhalation was slightly disturbing, a very real part of her felt a warm glow of happiness spreading over her. Her memories of his life were still scattered, and there were enormous gaps that still existed, but she truly felt that rush of joy as she spent the next hour helping her son get his strength back.

/

Vegeta stood at the entryway of the bedroom, staring inside. Having gotten just enough food to keep from going into convulsions, he had gone to his quarters to rest for the first time in days. It was a simple enough idea, one that had been done tens of thousands of times before.

But something stalled him in that doorway. As he looked in the room, he could not help feeling like he was somehow intruding. For years it had been his room, but at that moment, it somehow felt wrong to call it such. The sheets had been changed back, the curtains were thick and dark, and there was no longer a scrap of pink left in it. His clothes lay in the drawers, his shoes were stored in the closet, and his toothbrush rested in the adjoining bathroom. But somehow, it did not feel like it was his.

No, it was _her_ room again. It had been since the day of the accident. She had allowed him entrance to her room, and certainly into her bed, but that was the problem. She still saw it as _her_ room with _her_ bed in it. He had suspected that she thought as such since the day after he and Trunks had returned to the compound, and her recent behavior had only confirmed that. And while he desperately wanted to blame her for that, he knew it was only partially her fault. Ever since the accident, she had been different. Very different.

Too different.

She was not the woman that had invited him to live with her on a whim in spite of his status of enemy. She was not the obnoxious shrew who had stolen his clothes and left the most atrocious clothing she could find in its wake. She was not the shrill genius who built the training room for him, only to add in an enormous television screen that she could access at any time to yell at him in high-definition whenever she was in a mood. She was not the psychotic caregiver who nursed him back to health one day only to threaten to murder him in his sleep the next. She was not the woman that would call him an ass at lunch and swear eternal devotion to him by dinner.

She was not his.

_Shut up_, he told himself. _You are being nothing more than a paranoid little fool right now. You are exhausted. You are malnourished. You are going to rest for a while, digest what you have eaten, finish replenishing your system, and then you will stop being a pitifully emotional little bitch. Now stop being weak and take a nap!_

With a small nod and feeling very slightly better, the prince took a step into the room.

"Oh, Vegeta!"

The Saiyan paused in his step and glanced over his shoulder. The woman was walking down the hallway in his direction, and there was a concerned look on her face. "Hn?" he responded.

Bulma approached her lover, a slightly nervous look on her face. "Um, Trunks is winding down his meal, and I thought you and I should talk."

Vegeta offered only a silent nod in return. He had never particularly enjoyed the aspects of their relationship that involved talking about it, nor was he good at them. In fact, they often made him so uncomfortable that he had made getting out of them into an art form. However, given their strenuous circumstances, he knew that avoiding it could do so much more damage than escaping that it would not be worth it.

In front of him, Bulma tugged nervously on her arm. "Uh, listen," she reluctantly began, avoiding eye contact, "you and I…I know that we have a history together, and I really appreciate everything that you've done, and how much I've been putting you through, but…"

Her sentence died there, but the message was clear enough for Vegeta to feel his blood turn to rivers of ice in his veins.

Neither one of them spoke for a whole agonizing minute before Bulma summoned the courage to finish her statement. "Vegeta," she softly told him, "I think it would be best, at least for right now, if we kind of cooled things off. You've done so much for me and our family lately, and I know it hasn't been easy on you, but it would make me more…comfortable, I guess is the word, if maybe you could stay in your old room for a while." Her eyes were still down and she was still tugging on her arm as she added, "It's not a permanent thing, just until I can settle back in to this life a little better. I'm…I'm a little overwhelmed right now, and…"

"And my presence is not helping," he coolly replied.

Bulma shrugged one shoulder, her eyes dropping from the wall to the floor. "Well, yeah," she truthfully told him. "You know that I still have huge holes in my memory, and I think it would be best for all of us if I get a few more of those filled in before we live together like a couple again. I'm happy to have you living here, and I would never try to keep you away from our family, but the couple thing…it just doesn't feel right to me right now. Not with everything that's still missing." Slowly, she brought her eyes back up to the wall, still avoiding the gaze of her lover. "And like I said before, it's not a forever thing. Just…just for a little while."

The waves of emotions that ran through the prince was so varied that he could not even begin to identify them as they crashed against his soul. The anger at being kicked out of his own room without being asked, the grief at the loss of his lover, the betrayal of her suggestion…it was far too much for him to process in an instant. All he could do was stand there and glare at the woman, not moving a muscle, not even to breathe.

Barely able to gather the courage to do so, the heiress forced herself to look her lover in the eye. "It's a lot to ask, and I know it," she told him in a gentle but firm tone. "And believe me, I understand that it's not at all fair to you. But I can't…I'm just not ready for being your wife, or your girlfriend, or…or whatever the hell I was to you." She knew that it was a poor place to end the conversation, but even that much had been so stressful that she wanted desperately to take a few hours off and rest in peace. Without another word, she turned around and walked away, planning to use her parent's temporarily vacated bedroom for a nap. After all, it seemed downright wrong to ask Vegeta to move out of the room only to walk in past him and claim the bed.

Still stunned, Vegeta watched the woman disappear down the hall. The voice was starting to whisper in his mind again, and he found that he could not force it away. He also found that he lacked the will to try. It sounded so right at the moment, and there was not even a slight temptation to attempt to push it away. It was right. It was perfectly right.

After several more minutes ticked by, the prince shook himself out of his self-imposed daze. The voice had quieted down, and without its menacing taunts, Vegeta found himself once again able to move. The maelstrom of thoughts had subsided into an empty numbness, a state he was well accustomed to. Do not think about the pain and the pain no longer hurts. Just move forward, and never turn back. It was the only tolerable way for his system to cope with his situation.

He was not entirely certain of what he was doing as he did it. His body seemed to take full command, allowing his overtaxed mind a brief rest in the sea of numbness that was forming. It would be hours later that he would realize that he had taken his things and once again removed them from their bedroom, allowing it to become _hers_. It would be longer before he would wonder why he complied so readily. But he had not slept in days, and his actions were not his own. His body did not care about emotional turmoil any longer, and wanted nothing more than to find the fastest possible way to get the direly needed rest.

By the time he had finished relocating his possessions, his mind had shut down entirely. There was absolutely no conscious awareness of his surroundings as he finished his final trip and closed the door.

He had been utterly unaware that his son had been standing in the hall, watching with horror and anger as his parents' relationship suffered another enormous fracture.

And he had missed it entirely when Trunks ran off as fast as he could, leaving the compound behind him.


	9. Chapter 9

Bulma groaned as she began to wake up from her nap. When pressed, she could find a little rest in any location. However, when she slept anywhere other than her own bed, she always woke up with a slightly stiff neck, and not nearly as well rested. It also left her mildly disoriented as she tried to remember where, exactly, she had fallen asleep. That particular afternoon took her slightly longer than usual, though. It was a rare moment indeed for her to be asleep in one of the Capsule Corp bedroom and have it not be her own.

Groggily surveying her area, the heiress let out another groan. "Oh, right," she remembered. "Vegeta…"

With a grunt, she collapsed her head once more against the pillow. "Vegeta," she softly said to herself, "what am I going to do with you?" Everything involving that Saiyan had her so confused. He was gorgeous, he was sexy as hell, and she certainly enjoyed making love with him. In small doses, she even enjoyed just being near him. But there was so much missing, from both her mind and their relationship, and she was at a loss for what to do next. Should she sit him down and demand a verbal play by play of everything they had experienced? Maybe she should ask him out on the date and try to rekindle that lost spark. Or perhaps she should simply give him time and space, allowing him to make the first move.

None of those seemed like scenarios that would play out well to her, though. Even with missing chunks of her memories, Bulma still knew well enough that playing Twenty Questions with the Saiyan prince never made it beyond question six, and that was when the questions involved things like "How was your training?", not "Describe to me in detail how we fell in love". And Vegeta did not strike her as the type who had ever actually been on a proper date. Besides, did she really want to go out in public and _then_ get him agitated? That certainly would not do. And she had been trying to give people space, including herself, but that had only seemed to make things worse.

"There has to be an answer," she told herself. "Every problem has a solution, and I will find the solution to this."

She spoke the words, but there was a nagging sense of doubt lingering in the back of her mind. There was just so much that needed to be done, and even though she did not like to admit it, her relationship with the prince was not at the top of her list. Trunks had to come first. He was a child, her health was in danger, and she could very well have been the only one with the ability to help him. Everything had to be put in to helping the boy. Anything else was a luxury.

Rolling out of bed, Bulma began assembling a mental checklist of what she would do for the remainder of the day. More food would have to be ordered, Trunks' vital signs needed to be checked on, Vegeta had to be consulted so she could get all possible information on what she was up against, and Gohan should probably receive a call as well…

The heiress glanced at the clock as she stood up. "Damn it," the grumbled. It was already almost seven in the evening. "I guess I've got less time than I thought I did..." Forcing herself completely awake, she decided that her first stop should be with her son. After all, his condition would determine the order and urgency of everything else. Rapping softly on his door, she called out, "Honey? Are you in there?"

But there was no answer, and Bulma rolled her eyes. "If you won't answer, young man, I'm coming in!" she threatened. Still, there was no response, so she followed through with her promise and opened the door.

The boy was not in there.

"Hn, wonder where he could be then?" she asked herself. "Maybe the kitchen…"

Trunks was not in the kitchen, though. Nor was he anywhere else in the compound that Bulma had searched. "Well, that can't be good," she muttered. "Maybe I should get Vegeta, see if he can help me find the kid." Quickly, she made her way to the prince's old room, unable to repress that sense of dread that was forming in the pit of her stomach. She had told him only a few hours earlier to move out of her room, and already she was turning to him for help. But it could not be helped. She needed to know where her son was. If Vegeta was going to be mad at her, then so be it.

The boy had to come first.

"Vegeta?" she gently called out, repeating what she had done only a few minutes earlier on Trunks' door. "Are you in there?"

The elder prince gave no response either, and Bulma could feel the nervous sweat that formed on her palms. "Vegeta?" she called again. "Listen, I'm freaking out a little right now, so if you're in there, let me in, and if you're not, now would be a great time for one of your coming-out-of-nowhere-in-the-knick-of-time moments. Really, really good." Still no answer came, and with a small swallow, she turned the knob to enter.

However, the door was locked, and refused to budge. "God damn it!" the heiress shouted, more so at the door than anything else. "Listen, Vegeta," she hollered, "you can be as mad at me as you want, but I've got no idea where _our son_ is, and I am not going anywhere until you help me!"

A minute passed without so much as the sound of scuffling feet, and in her frustration, Bulma kicked to door as hard as she could. "If you do not open this door in the next ten seconds," she threatened, "I am going to pull it off its hinges and scream at you until your ears hemorrhage blood!" She was a little surprised when she still heard nothing, but Bulma Briefs was never one to let a good threat lie idle. Ducking next door to her own room, she grabbed her basic tool belt and immediately removed the locking mechanism from the door. "Daring to ignore me, that bastard," she growled, dropping the removed lock to the floor. "I ought to kill him for this."

Unable to resist a dramatic entrance, Bulma kicked the disabled door open and placed her hands on her hips. "Mister, you have got a lot of nerve…to…"

Any argument she had been forming in her mind before died in a heartbeat. Vegeta was in there, but he was lying still on the bed. He looked almost lifeless, save the extremely shallow motion of his chest.

"Oh, no," she whispered. She rushed to his side and shook him by the shoulders. "Vegeta?" she called out. "Vegeta, if you can hear me, give me some kind of sign. I need to know that you can hear me."

Nothing. No flutter of the eyelids, no growl from his throat, no a twitch of the fingers. "No, no, no," the heiress kept repeating. She shook him harder, praying that it would wake him but knowing that it would not. "Vegeta!" she shouted inches from his face. "Vegeta, wake up!"

_I should have caught this sooner_, she thought, continuing to shake him harder and harder and screaming his name. _I should have known. He hasn't been eating. He hasn't been sleeping. Even I know that he's pale and underweight. He looked like hell when he came home today…gone for three days and looked that bad when he got back, how did I miss it? This is bad, this is very bad…_

When he still refused to respond, the heiress dug her cell phone out of her pocket. "Please pick up," she whispered. "Oh please, oh please, oh please…"

"Hello, Son residence…"

"Gohan!" Bulma cried out, interrupting the poor teenager. "Put your mother on the phone! Now!"

Only a few seconds passed before Chi-Chi's voice came over the line. "Bulma?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

Unaware that she was doing it, Bulma let out a choked sob. "He's not waking up," she sobbed. "I'm trying to wake him up, but he won't, and I don't know why, and Trunks is gone, and Vegeta needs help, and I don't know what to do! Help me, Chi-Chi, I don't know what to do!"

"Whoa, whoa, calm down," the raven haired mother firmly commanded. "I can't help you if you can't listen to me, okay? I need you to calm down."

Bulma swallowed and nodded. She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and her running nose with the back of her sleeve. "Okay," she gasped. "Okay, I can listen."

"Good," Chi-Chi praised. "First of all, Trunks is here. He got here around an hour ago, but he was really worked up and Goku and Gohan are out with him right now helping him. I wanted to have more information before I called you, and I'm sorry that it led to worry. But he's here, and he's safe, and he's being closely looked over."

Bulma slouched a little as she let out her relieved sigh. "Thank you," she gratefully said. "Okay, okay, Trunks is safe. That's good. Now what about Vegeta?"

The silence on the other end of the line was anything but reassuring. "Chi-Chi?" she quietly asked. "What do I do about Vegeta?"

Chi-Chi was quiet a moment longer before sighing. "Hold on a sec," she bit out, placing the phone on the counter. Bulma waited anxiously, unable to make out what Chi-Chi was saying to who she could only guess was Goten. A minute later the phone was picked up once more. "Bulma?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to get someone to you as fast as I can," the younger woman assured. "Stay right where you are with him. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you until then?"

The heiress could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks again. "Yeah," she whispered. "I really would."

"Okay," Chi-Chi calmly replied. "Don't worry, honey, it'll be fine."

With a tearful laugh, Bulma shook her head. "How do you do it?" she asked. "How are you staying so calm?"

A light chuckle escaped the younger woman. "It's a mom thing," she explained. "When some else's child is in trouble, you stay calm and level headed and can fix any problem. When it's your own kid…well, you and I both know how calm I am when Gohan and Goten are in trouble…"

"As subtle as an atomic warhead?" the heiress laughed, once again wiping away her tears.

"Bulma, I'm hurt!" Chi-Chi gasped. "I am at _least_ as subtle as a dinosaur in a china shop!"

Bulma smiled, wiping away residual tears. "I thought the saying was a _bull_ in a china shop."

"No, I'm not that subtle."

One more sad laugh and one sleeve wipe later, Bulma sat on the corner of Vegeta's bed and looked down on him. "Chi-Chi," she quietly confessed, "I screwed up."

But the younger woman dismissed it immediately. "Honey, you are recovering from hell, and no one bats a thousand. Whatever you did, I'm sure it can't be so bad as to be irreparable."

"It might be," the heiress choked out, her tears returning once more. "Chich, I've been so worried about Trunks and so wrapped up in trying to get everything back together that I've been ignoring Vegeta."

While her normal response to such a claim was _He's a big boy, he can take care of himself_, Chi-Chi stilled her tongue. Obviously, Vegeta was _not_ taking care of himself. Everyone in the group knew that his wellbeing had taken a definite slide over the past few weeks, but none of them had truly understood just how bad it was. He had been a little quieter than usual, perhaps, and had definitely lost weight, but there had never been any indication that his self negligence had taken that severe a turn.

_No, that's not true,_ the younger mother thought. _There've been a dozen signs. We just ignored them all. Gohan's been telling us that Vegeta's been falling apart for a while, but we told him to leave well enough alone. We all could have stepped in. We all had the chance, and we all did nothing._

"Listen to me," she finally told the other woman, "I know that things seem hard right now, but know that your friends will always be there to help you and your family. Just hang in there. Help is…"

"Bulma?"

"…on the way," the mother finished. "Okay, Trunks is in my living room. If you need anything, don't hesitate. Tell Goku not to break your stuff. Goten, put that down…" Chi-Chi did not even bother with a formal good-bye, favoring instead to stop some imminent destruction of her property at the hands of her son.

Meanwhile, Gohan was placing two fingers on Vegeta's neck, and Goku pulled Bulma in for a hug. "It'll be okay," he assured. "We'll take good care of him and get him back on his feet. Right, Gohan?"

Gohan frowned, keeping his eyes on the fallen prince. "Uh, sure. Dad, why don't you and Bulma go get a snack or something?"

Goku began to guide his oldest friend out, trying to maintain a jovial attitude, but it was not enough. Bulma was a smart woman, and she knew what was not being said. Things were not looking good, and Gohan wanted to work without her watching on. "Gohan…" Her pleading paused, though, as she noticed the serious expression on the teenager's face. "Just…take care of him."

"I will," the boy promised, still not looking up.

Bulma was barely aware of her actions as Goku led her to the kitchen and began to offer her food. "This is my fault."

"No, no, no, no, and no," Goku firmly said, placing three boxes of cookies in front of his friend. "This isn't your fault, Bulma. Things've been crazy, we've all gone a little nuts, and things'll get better soon. You just let us help you, and you and Vegeta will go back to putting the fun in dysfunctional in no time at all."

"But…"

"No buts!" Goku interrupted, adding a cake to the table. "It wasn't Vegeta's fault you drove off a cliff and smacked your head, and it's not your fault that he does this stuff when he's stressed. You're both screwed up in your own ways, but it always works out in the end and this time isn't any different."

A soft smile came on Bulma's face, and she tentatively grabbed a frosted oatmeal cookie. "You really have faith in me and Vegeta working out, don't you?"

"Yup!" the cheerful Saiyan swore. "Ever since Trunks first showed up in his time machine and…"

"Hold the phone," the heiress interrupted, putting down her drink, "ever since who did what now?"

Confused, Goku scratched the back of his head. "Gee, you really do have big holes in your head still, don't you?"

Bulma scowled. "Boy, do you know how to make a girl feel better."

"What? Oh, you know what I mean." Taking a seat, Goku pulled an enormous slice off of the cake and dumped it unceremoniously onto a plate. "Yeah, before you and Vegeta ever hooked up, there was this future version of Trunks that showed up in a time machine and told us about the androids that were going to kill us all."

"I remember the androids," the heiress added in. "Well, sort of. I remember what they look like, and that they were evil, but then they turned out to be not nearly as evil as we thought they were. I am also aware that Krillen married the blonde one."

"Right!" Goku cheered. "So anyway, when Trunks came, he told us that his world had been, like, destroyed everything, and that everyone but you and he died."

The widening of Bulma's eyes at that statement was accentuated by her still mostly bare head. "All of you died? Even you?"

"Well, I had a heard virus and died from _that_," the Saiyan casually responded. "Do you really not remember any of this? I thought you were getting better."

The heiress looked away. "So did I," she whispered. "I was starting to get some of my memories back in that house Vegeta and Trunks were staying in, and I thought they would be returning more and more. That's why I…I mean, why Vegeta and I…um…"

Goku swallowed his cake and nodded. "Why you had all that sex with each other. Don't worry, I get it."

Bulma's drink flew out through her nose. "Oh, holy crap, that hurt," she sputtered, wiping away what remained. "Goku, do you have to be so _blunt_ about everything?"

"Usually, yeah."

Pushing her drink away, Bulma shook her head. "The point is," she went on, "that I figured that things were going to fall right back into place pretty quickly. But I haven't had a damn one since, and I swear that it's driving me insane! What the hell am I supposed to do, Goku? I have all this crap I have to get done, and all these things that are supposed to be part of my life, and I don't know a damn thing about ninety percent of it! How the hell do I make this better?" Her head lowered slightly before she added, "How am I supposed to take care of my family?"

Goku opened his mouth, but he stalled, his eyes growing distant as something entered his mind. "Bulma, why don't you have some cake, and I'll be back in a moment."

Bulma looked up and shifted her weight to her feet. "Does Gohan know something? How is he? Is Vegeta going to be okay?"

"Bulma," her friend gently spoke, guiding her back down, "just wait right here."

"But…"

"Please."

Her hands were shaking as she sat back down, and they continued to tremble so badly that she could not pick up her drink again, even minutes after Goku had disappeared. "He's going to be okay," she forced herself to say. "Goku and Gohan are taking care of him. He's going to be okay. He has to be okay."


	10. Chapter 10

Bulma paced around the kitchen table again and again and again. It had been several minutes since Goku had disappeared, and with no one telling her otherwise, she had to assume the worst. Vegeta had to be either dead or dying, and it was at least partially her own fault. There had been a thousand warning signs that something was extremely wrong with him, ones that even with her fractured memories she had understood well. But there had been too many other things that she had placed higher up on her importance list, brushing off his needs with no real concern of the consequences. Ten minutes of actually talking to him, without making a request or forcing another change in his life, probably could have prevented it from going so far.

But she had been afraid to talk to him. Afraid of what he might tell her. As selfish as it was, Bulma did not want to know anything more about her life with him before the accident. Certainly she would want to know further down the road, but between her issues with Trunks and her company being taken away, her affair with the prince seemed almost unimportant. If he finally, for what in her mind would be the first time, wanted to talk about _them_, she was not ready to deal with it. And it was her desire to avoid such a situation that had led her to allow a much needed talk go unspoken.

The intercom buzzed, and the heiress ran to it as quickly as she could. "Yes?"

"Hey Bulma!" Goku's cheery voice sounded through the system. "Listen, could you do me a big favor?"

"Absolutely," she agreed in a heartbeat. "You name it. Anything!" Bulma could barely hear the words, "Dad, hurry up!" as she waited for Goku's reply.

The Saiyan's voice dimmed slightly as he turned to tell Gohan everything was okay before returning the conversation to his oldest friend. "Could you list off every ice cream flavor you know?"

"Huh?" That was a far cry from what Bulma had been expecting. "Um, sure, but why…"

A slight scuffling sound met her ears before Gohan replaced his father. "Here's the deal," he bluntly said. "I need to get Vegeta a little more stabilized and then we can take him to Dende. Now, in order for me to do that, I need to get some more blood in his system. He and Dad are a match, but you know how my dad is with…"

"Don't say it!" Goku called out.

Groaning, Gohan went on. "I can get what I need if you can distract him," he finished up.

"Oh, that makes sense," Bulma responded. "Okay. Goku? Can you hear me?"

"Yup!"

"Good. Here we go. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies n' cream, pralines n' cream, cookie dough, chocolate chip cookie dough, chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip, rocky road, double fudge brownie, mocha almond fudge, coffee, bubble gum, double vanilla, French vanilla, Neapolitan, vanilla bean, vanilla chocolate, butter pecan, black cherry vanilla swirl, peanut butter cup, caramel praline crunch, strawberry banana, black raspberry, coconut pineapple, pineapple, mud pie, pistachio, cappuccino chip, chocolate vanilla swirl, key lime pie, peach, dulce de leche, spumoni, triple chocolate fudge sundae…"

A small yelp was heard, followed quickly by a thump and Gohan yelling, "Got it!"

Bulma frowned. "What was that sound?" she demanded.

"Nothing," Gohan insisted. "Dad looked down as I took the needle out of his arm and passed out. He'll be up in a minute and then we'll be good to go." And with that the line went dead.

Bulma backed away slightly from the intercom, thankful that Gohan had worked so quickly. She had been running out of ideas quickly, and had been on the verge of starting the list all over again and adding some combination of the words 'triple', 'fudge' and 'sundae' to all of them. As she relaxed a little, her mind gave her a gentle nudge, reminding her of just why she had been listing off those flavors in the first place.

With a resigned sigh, she sat down at the table and lay her head on it. Surviving the car crash had been a cakewalk next to dealing with the aftermath. At the rate things were going, the stress alone would be enough to kill her.

/

"Make him go away."

Piccolo had to suppress a smirk at Dende's request. "I will do my best to encourage him to keep his distance," he told the young Namekian. "You know as well as I do, though, that Son Goku cannot be forced to do anything."

Dende groaned. He thought of Goku as a friend, and certainly respected him as a warrior, but the past few weeks had shown the green young man that the Saiyan had a side to him that was more annoying than anything else. "Very well," he sighed. "Bring them in."

The warrior nodded, knowing perfectly well that Goku and Gohan were already on their way in to the palace. It was no time at all before Dende once again found himself kneeling over the unconscious form of the Saiyan prince, recreating the broken tissues.

"He seems to have declined," the young guardian pointed out.

The three around him all silently nodded. There was nothing new that any of them needed to say as they watched the young man work. As all of them had expected, the wounds from three days of nonstop fighting closed up, but the prince did not wake up.

"How long do you think he'll be out this time?" Goku asked, watching Dende get to his feet.

The little guardian shook his head. "It is too soon for me to give detail," he told the others. "My best guess at this point is that it will be a couple of days before he regains enough strength, and that is only if we find a way to get some nutrients into his system as he rests. I can heal wounds. I cannot compensate for severe malnourishment."

Beside him, Gohan nodded. "I know where Bulma keeps that stuff in the medical wing of the compound," he softly said. "I'll go get a few bags for an intravenous drip." He turned slightly to leave, but paused mid step. "Should I check in with Bulma while I'm down there?"

Piccolo shook his head. "We shall wait through the night in case of any change to his status. If he holds steady, as he likely will, we shall send your father to let her know of what transpired up here."

"Me?" Goku squawked. "Why me?"

"You are her friend, are you not?" Piccolo countered. "You will simply offer an account of the evening and offer her comfort. That is all you need do."

In front of them, Gohan sighed. "If you want, I can tell her."

Goku frowned as he looked at his firstborn child. He still hated the idea of being caught in the emotional fray, but he knew well enough that Gohan had been shouldering far more stress than any teenager should. "Nah, that's okay," he assured, plastering a smile on his face. "Don't worry about it. I'm just cranky 'cause I didn't eat dinner. Tell you what, how about you go get that stuff from Capsule Corp, I'll pretend I don't know what you're using as you set it up, and when that's done, you and I go have a nice, big dinner with your mother and the kids. Sound good to you?"

The smile on Gohan's face clearly showed both his appreciation and his exhaustion. "That sounds nice, Dad," he answered. "I'll be back in about ten minutes."

As the boy disappeared, Piccolo approached Goku. "You were wise to take on the responsibility."

"What?" Goku had been in a bit of a self-imposed trance when the conversation began. "Oh, yeah. Well, you're right, Bulma is my friend. And Gohan…he hasn't been doing really well the last few weeks. He's been a lot quieter, and he's not sleeping really well. He want to make everything better himself."

"Gee, I wonder where he got that from," Dende muttered, checking Vegeta's pulse.

On the side of the room, Goku laughed. "Yeah, I guess you're right. But he wants to save everyone from everything all the time. I want to help people and all, but I guess I'm a little more oblivious to problems than Gohan is."

"Hn."

Not another word was spoken as they waited for the teenager to return.

/

The hours rolled by, and soon enough, night had turned to day. The sun had risen. The birds were singing. The sky was bright, heralding the promise of a glorious new day.

And the nine year old boy just did not give a damn about any of it.

"Shut up," he muttered to the birds, pulling the sheets up over his head. But the birds continued to whistle and sing, unwilling to let the surliness of the boy bring down their chipper mood.

"I said shut the hell up," he growled, slamming his pillow on top of his head, trying vainly to block out the chirping.

Again, the birds chirped, continuing on with their merry little lives.

With a violent hiss, the boy threw his blanket and pillow away, marched over to his window, and flung it open. With four well placed blasts, the family of fowl was completely evaporated, with little more than the barest trace of blackened ashes sprinkled down onto the otherwise pristine ground.

"I told you to shut up," he snarled. With one hand, he sunk his fingers into the wooden frame of the window, cracking it under the power of his grip. Violently, the shoved the broken frame down, splintering the rest of the frame as the glass shattered into thousands of tiny shards. Angrily, he stomped back toward his bed, cracking his floorboards with each intense stomp until he dropped his tired body onto the small bed.

"My life sucks enough without trying to deal with your crap," he grumbled, flopping an arm over his closed eyes. He peeked out for a moment to look over at his still slumbering best friend. "Are you kidding me?" he growled. "You can even sleep through _that_? What the hell are you made of?"

Of course, no answer was given, save the abrasive snoring of the still sleeping eight year old. Angrily, Trunks turned his back on his friend and crossed his arms over his chest. Over and over again his mind kept playing through the same thoughts.

_Four days,_ he thought. _Four damn days ago, everything was perfect. Everything we could have wanted seemed to have just fallen right into place. So why the hell can't those two see it and get on with their damn lives? What are they, children?_

Trunks Briefs was mad. Very mad.

They had been so happy, so unbelievably happy for those seven great years. Everything had been wonderful and joyous and perfect for all three of them. It had been just so perfect, like that one last piece of a puzzle had been found and placed in their lives. It was not a traditional life, but it was one that had made all three of them happy.

And the end had been quiet and peaceful, but at the same time it was horrid and ugly. There had been no screaming, no swearing, no wild accusations flying between them. There had been no blows exchanged, no furniture flung, and no spiteful words spoken. It was quiet, almost completely wordless when it had ended.

And all three of them had been suffering for far too long.

Why could they not get back together? What could possibly have been stopping them any longer? It did not make any sense to him.

So he had continued to push and ask and beg for an explanation, but no one could ever give him one. At least, not one that he could accept. Just hearing about how complicated their lives would be did not count as a valid excuse in his mind. For the last four days, he had wanted to fix what was wrong in their lives, but it seemed like no one else was willing to fight for it.

And it made him mad.

Very mad.

And he was not sure just how long he could keep his anger to himself.

/

Bulma screamed and fell out of her chair as Goku materialized in front of her. "Damn it, Goku!" she hollered at him. "I do not need that right now!"

"Sorry," Goku apologized, scratching the back of his head. "I just wanted to let you know how stuff was going."

Pulling herself back up, Bulma shouted, "Then why not _call_ me on the _phone_? Or do you not know how to do that?"

Completely unfazed by her comment, Goku just smiled at his friend. "No, I know how," he honestly told her. "But it takes about the same amount of time to dial a phone as it does to just pop on over, and this way we can talk face to face."

"Why does talking face to face make any difference?" she huffed.

Goku shrugged. "I get less distracted this way. When I'm talking to someone I'm looking at, all I think about is them. When I'm talking on the phone, I have a bad habit of following my eyes to something that needs work on it and wandering off when the other person stops to breathe."

Significantly calmer than she had been a moment ago, Bulma cracked a smile. "Yeah, that sounds right for you."

"Apparently Goten does it too," the Saiyan pointed out with a laugh. "I tell ya', Gohan must have gotten the ability to focus from Chi-Chi, because it _definitely_ did not come from me!"

Bulma gave him a mock pout. "I've seen you focused," she accused.

"Yeah, on something I'm looking at," the tall man laughed. "I see a problem, I fix a problem. Unfortunately, I don't really think about anything else when I'm working on something. If I'm training, I think about training. When I'm playing with Goten, I think about playing with Goten. When I'm protecting eggs, I think about protecting eggs. When I'm eating, I think about food."

"You always think about food," the heiress teased.

Again, Goku laughed. "Only if there's nothing for me to focus on!" he insisted.

"Like telling me what the hell is going on?"

The Saiyan gulped. "Oh, yeah. That." He approached the woman and placed his large hands on her narrow shoulders. "I want you to know that he's going to be okay, but we're going to keep him at the Lookout for a couple of days. Last time we took him back right after he was healed and kind of assumed he would be alright. Gohan and Piccolo told me everything's going to be okay. They just want to make sure he gets plenty of rest right now. You know, get him closer to full strength before we put him on his feet."

Bulma looked away slightly. "I can take care of him," she softly insisted.

"I know," he friend agreed. "But you have other stuff to take care of here, and he kinda needs eyes on him closely for a little bit. If everything else was fine here, we'd bring him back in a heartbeat. But you've got Trunks to look after, not to mention yourself. This is how to get your family back together. Trust me."

A pit of guilt formed in Bulma's stomach, but it was not from the insinuation that she would not be able to look after her estranged lover. Something else was gnawing at her, something she could not firmly place her finger on. Her head dropped, and she could not stop the tears that began to roll down her cheek.

Goku frowned, noticing immediately. "Hey, hey, it's okay!" he insisted. Tenderly, he wrapped his arms around the heiress and pulled her gently against his broad chest. "It'll all be okay. And I'll always be here for you. I promise."

But his words were not a comfort to her. The guilty feeling grew and grew, and the kinder his words were, the worse she felt.


	11. Chapter 11

Bulma's knuckles were stone white as she flew toward the mountains. Three days had passed since she had talked to or been near anyone, and she could not tolerate one more day in her mansion. Her isolation had made her luxurious home feel like nothing more than a large prison. Everyone had talked about how they were helping her to get her family back, but it was hard to believe it with their behavior. All the secrecy, all the isolation, it was almost as though they seemed to think she was incapable of doing _anything_ on her own. The worst part of it, though, was that she was starting to believe that they were right.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she had made several that had not been to the benefit of the family. She could still justify them to herself, but only barely. Large parts of her world were still completely gone to her, and she had both emotionally and logically decided that the best course of action was to take care of herself first. After all, how much good could she be to her family if she knew nothing but the basics about them?

But that strategy did not factor in everything around her falling apart the way it was. She had agreed to try to make her family work again under the assumption that her memories would be returning, and that those blank spots in her mind were her only real concern. It did not take into account her business, nor did it consider that the other members of her home would require any support at all. It was still too much too fast, and she had let it slip through her fingers.

Insofar as she could tell, she had two real options at that point: she could hold the course, stay alone for a little longer, and see if she could get her life a little more in order before trying to fix her family, or she could aggressively step forward and do whatever she could to get her family back, memories be damned. She had thought long and hard about it, and in her heart she knew that if there was ever going to be hope for truly getting her old life back, she would have to do the hard thing and jump straight into her problems. One way or another, she was determined to make them into a family again.

That did not mean that she was not afraid of the fight ahead of her. It was going to be hard, and she knew it, but she had been running long enough. No matter what happened in the past, no matter what the future held, Bulma Briefs was going in and not backing down until her mission was accomplished.

Her vehicle landed fairly quietly outside of the Son house, but she knew they were more than aware of her arrival. The boys could all sense her, and nothing happened around Chi-Chi's house without that woman knowing about it. Needless to say, she was not surprised when the brunette mother came out to greet her before the engine had a chance to cool.

"Hello," she calmly greeted, wiping her soapy hands on her apron. "I wasn't expecting you."

The apprehension in Chi-Chi's voice was clear, and Bulma had a feeling that her unannounced visit was not something the younger woman was at all happy about. "Sorry," the heiress meekly apologized. "I know crashing your place isn't really a great thing to do, but it's been forever and a day since I've seen anyone, and I needed to get out of the house, and I miss my son, and…"

"Bulma," Chi-Chi interrupted, a tense smile on her face, "please come in. I'll make us a snack, and we can talk."

The heiress nodded, slowly letting out what breath she had been holding on to. "So, are the boys here?"

The twitch in Chi-Chi's shoulder at the question was unmistakable. "Gohan has taken the little ones out on a camping trip," she slowly replied, "and Goku is at the Lookout."

_With Vegeta_, Bulma concluded, silently entering the quaint house. It never failed to amaze her just how small the Son home was in comparison to her own, and as she looked around the living room, she could not help but wonder how hard it must be to keep three people with Saiyan blood under such a comparatively small roof. However, she stilled her tongue. She had already intruded into the home unannounced, and she had far more important things to discuss with her friend besides potentially cramped living conditions.

The snack was made in uncomfortable silence, neither woman wanting to make the next move. Minutes ticked by like hours before the tray was placed on the coffee table and Chi-Chi took a seat, and that action only served to intensify the awkwardness. The drinks were poured, but neither woman drank.

Finally tired of waiting, Bulma let out a sigh. "Look," she bluntly stated, "I know that you guys are trying to help me, and I appreciate it, I really do. But I want my family back, and I want them back now."

"Bulma," the other mother sternly responded, "this is not a custody hearing. It is just what needs to be done for a little while until you are _ready_ to live with them again."

The heiress' eyes narrowed dangerously at her friend. "With all due respect," she bit out, "it's not up to you to decide whether or not my family is okay. I'm ready to take on the responsibility now, and I'm not going to let you tell me otherwise."

"I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you," Chi-Chi returned. "We stood by and let you try to work things out on your own. We stepped back and minded our own business so you could 'handle' it. But you clearly were not ready, and terrible, terrible things have been happening to your family right under your nose. And we stayed away and let it happen."

"So, what, to make yourselves feel better, you're punishing me?" Bulma snapped.

Chi-Chi placed her teacup down so hard that it fractured slightly from the force. "You know what, Bulma?" she shouted. "Get over yourself. You keep treating everyone else like they're the enemy if they don't tell you what you want to hear, even if it's what you _need_ to hear. We are not punishing you, and we never have been. I just told you that we stood aside and let things fall apart too far, and now we know that we can't do that. Your entire family needed help, we are helping, and if you don't like it, tough luck, because we are your friends and we will not stand by and watch all of you continue to suffer as we do _nothing_!"

Bulma stared, taken aback by the tone and not fully taking in the words. "You think this is helping?" she shot back. "You're helping to tear us apart! How the hell would you feel if I kept part of _your_ family away from _you_?"

The other woman shouted something back, but Bulma did not hear a word of it. Everything around her had dulled slightly, and a deep ringing noise sang between her ears as she began to lose sense of reality around her. Blacks and whites and greys filled her vision as another memory slammed into her.

_Chi-Chi turned and glared at her, burning hatred radiating from her eyes. "Don't you dare pretend that you're here to help me," she sneered. "You know what? Get out! Just get out!"_

_Bulma felt an overpowering wave of guilt crashing down on her as she stood her ground. "Chi-Chi, you have to believe me, I never thought this would happen…"_

"_Of course you didn't," the younger woman hissed in interruption. "It was just some fun little thing for you, wasn't it? You don't really think about anybody but yourself, do you? And why would you? You have your perfect little world with your perfect house and your perfect job and your perfect life, all just waiting for you to get your perfect little self back to it. And you didn't think it would damage that perfect little life of yours, so why would you even care?"_

"_That's not fair," Bulma shot back. "You can't put all of this on me, Chi-Chi."_

"_Oh?" Chi-Chi snapped back. "Whose fault is it then?"_

_Bulma felt her entire body grow stiff as she prepared her answer. "Goku…"_

"_My Goku isn't here, and it's your fault!" the brunette shrieked, throwing a lamp that Bulma just barely managed to avoid. "You broke apart my family! What, you couldn't stand that you didn't have him all to yourself anymore, so I couldn't have him either? Is that it? Is it?"_

_Anger began to flood Bulma, and she defiantly took a step forward. "Look, I didn't force Goku to do anything, and if you're not happy, then I'm sorry. But if you think I came here to let you scream at me…"_

"_Don't you dare pretend you're all high and mighty," Chi-Chi sneered. "I cannot believe you, tearing my family apart and having the audacity to…"_

"_I did not tear your family apart!" Bulma screamed back. "I came here to offer you help. If you want it, fine. If you don't, trust me, I will walk out that door and never offer again, because I know you'll never let your damn pride down enough to accept it."_

_Chi-Chi shrieked and kicked the couch, splintering the arm off of it. "That's all this is to you, isn't it?" she hollered. "I'm just some poor little charity case and you think you can just write a check and be absolved from everything you've done to us, don't you?"_

"_How dare you?" Bulma snapped. "How dare you treat this as anything other than an offer made out of friendship?"_

_A bitter laugh escaped the younger woman, and Chi-Chi shook her head. "Friendship?" she scornfully repeated. "You think anything we have every had is even close to friendship? You treated me like your enemy from that first day we met, and you've only gotten worse since I married Goku. You have __**never**__ called me. You have __**never **__invited me over. You have __**never **__asked me if I was okay. You have __**never**__ offered me assistance in __**anything**__ in my __**life**__. And you honestly expect me to believe that you came here as a __**friend**__?"_

_Bulma looked away slightly. "I know I haven't been there a lot in the past," she tried to defend, "but that doesn't mean that we're not…"_

"_We're done," Chi-Chi coldly interrupted. "Get out of my home, Bulma. Get out of what little of it I still have left."_

"I'm sorry!"

"Shh, it's okay," Chi-Chi calmly said, guiding Bulma back down to the couch. "It's okay."

Bulma stared at the younger woman, wondering what had just happened. They were still in the Son living room, but the heiress began to recognize that the memory was over and she was having a pillow cradled underneath her head. "What…?"

"You got really pale and started shaking," Chi-Chi gently explained, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Are you feeling okay? Should I call a doctor?"

Shaking her head, Bulma slowly rolled onto her side. "No, no, it's okay," she hesitantly began. "I just…it was just a…I mean, I was…" She nervously swallowed, trying to find her voice again. "I was remembering something."

"Oh!" Rushing around the living room briefly, Chi-Chi had the coffee table cleared and was using it as her own seat before Bulma could truly process just what was going on. "That's wonderful news!"

But Bulma seemed far from joyous. "No, no, no, no…"

Chi-Chi frowned. "Honey, what is it?" she tenderly asked.

Bulma looked at her friend, and immediately that wave of guilt slammed back into her. "Oh, I'm so, so sorry, Chi-Chi."

"For what?"

"I…I did something to you…to Goku…"

Before she managed to get another word out, her oldest friend appeared in the living room, startling Chi-Chi to her feet. "Hey," Goku quickly greeted. "Everyone okay here? Something seemed kinda off, and I just wanted to make sure you're all okay."

Bulma could not even bring herself to look up at him. Everything felt so wrong that she honestly wanted to shrivel up and die just to make all the pain go away. Knowing that she had somehow hurt her closest friend and his family so deeply was killing her. Her breathing became shallow and ragged as she frantically tried to decipher exactly what she had done, and how she could make it up to them, but nothing would come.

"Bulma?" Goku asked, dropping to his knee. "What's wrong?"

Still refusing to look up, all she managed to respond with was, "What did I do to you?"

More confused than ever, Goku looked between his wife and his friend. "Uh, nothing, Bulma. You didn't do anything to me."

"Yes, I did!" she snapped back. "I did something that came between the two of you! I drove you two apart!"

Goku frowned. "You really, really didn't," he assured.

"But I did!" Bulma insisted. "I remember being here, in this room, with Chi-Chi, and she was so mad at me, and she told me that it was all my fault, and..."

Behind them both, Chi-Chi rolled her eyes. "Oh, for crying out loud. _That's_ the memory you had? Bulma, you didn't do a damn thing wrong, so suck it up and get over it."

Though she was not entirely certain what to expect, Bulma slowly looked up at the younger mother. "No, we had that big fight. I know we did."

"But you clearly don't remember how it started," she strictly answered. Taking a firm stride forward, she knocked her husband out of the way and once again sat on the edge of the coffee table. She glanced to the side and asked Goku to leave them be for a few minutes before once again looking Bulma in the eye. "Listen to me. Yes, we had a fight. Yes, it was an ugly one. And yes, I was mad as hell at you at the time. But I promise you, you did not actually do anything wrong."

"Then why were we fighting?" the heiress asked. "I mean, the things we were saying, they don't get said for no reason."

Letting out a tired sigh, Chi-Chi picked up Bulma's hands and explained. "Several years ago," she slowly began, "we faced an enemy called Cell."

"I know," Bulma said before she could stop herself.

Chi-Chi gave a firm squeeze of the hands, her own quiet way of asking her friend to shut up. "A lot of hard things were going on in all of our lives at that point, things none of us felt like we could control. Then the fight came, and Goku didn't come home."

While Bulma had been academically aware that Goku had been dead for seven years, hearing come from the woman who had been his widow somehow gave it even greater impact.

"Apparently," the brunette reluctantly went on, "when Goku told the others that he wasn't planning on ever coming back, he told them that you had once mentioned that he was a magnet for trouble, and that the reason he was staying dead was to keep bad guys from coming after us."

"Oh, Chi-Chi…"

"Let me finish," she firmly commanded. "That fight that we had came about a week after my Goku had died. You had come over to see if there was anything Gohan and I needed, and I, well, I wasn't in the mood for it. I had just lost my husband, my son was unreachably depressed, and I was almost three months pregnant. I was tired and stressed and overwhelmed, and with all of that on me, I hated you. I blamed you for Goku choosing to stay away. I blamed you for putting the idea in his head that broke us apart."

Bulma cringed at the accusation, but kept her mouth shut.

"But," Chi-Chi went on, "and I can't stress this enough, it was not your fault. You made a stupid little joke to him. You didn't encourage him to leave. You didn't force him to go. It was a joke, and there was no way at all you could have known how it was going to play out. I was mad at you back then. I understand now. We've been fine with it for years."

Giving a soft smile, Bulma wiped away the small hints of tears that had been forming in her eyes. "Oh, this is so ridiculous," she laughed. "It's a fight we had years ago, and I still feel like we just had it. I can't stand feeling like this pitiful little weakling that can't handle the simplest thing. This is pathetic! Why can't I just be me again?"

Chi-Chi smirked at her friend. "Pitiful little weakling?" she teased.

Bulma blinked in confusion. "What?"

"I never thought I'd think this was cute, but sometimes you sound just like him."

Bulma opened her mouth to ask for clarification, but found herself interrupted by the younger woman. "So, this is your first new memory in a while, huh?" she sympathetically asked.

The heiress nodded. "Yeah," she confessed. "It's actually the first one since I brought the boys home."

"Do you mind if I ask what might have triggered it?" Chi-Chi pressed. "I mean, if we could figure out some sort of trigger for them, we might be able to jog it along a lot faster."

Bulma frowned. "There were a lot that seemed to come back at once," she slowly started, "but the first couple of them came right after I went through something similar to a memory, and in a similar place." Something began to light up on her face, but she hesitated when Goku walked back into the room.

"Hey, do you guys have a minute?" he asked. "I have an idea that I want to talk to you about."

Chi-Chi huffed as she looked at her husband. "For the last time, Goku, I am not letting you eat while we do it."

"Huh? Oh, no, not that one. I still don't think you're keeping an open mind to it, but that's not what this is about."

"Well what is it?" Bulma demanded.

Entering the room all the way, Goku smiled down at the woman on the couch. "I think I know how to get your memories back."


	12. Chapter 12

Bulma stood outside of the building, her courage draining rapidly from her soul. "I…I don't know if I'm ready for this," she stammered out.

"Oh, come on," Goku responded, patting her on the shoulder. "You said you wanted to get your memories back, and this'll get you your memories back. Now let's get this show on the road and get things back to normal!"

"Goku," Bulma protested, digging her feet into the sand, "this isn't the same as having my memories come back!"

The Saiyan let out a frustrated huff and placed his hands squarely on his hips. "Yeah, I know that," he admitted. "But the way I see it, you really only have these two choices. Either you can wait for the really, really slow way to work, and have the rest of your life on hold until some really long time in the future until it's too late to really fix everything, or you can stop being such a baby about all of this and march your butt in there and get this done and over with."

"But…"

"Nuh-uh," her oldest friend stubbornly interrupted, shaking his head. "Bulma, it's like ripping off a band-aid. You can do it fast or you can do it slow, but it has to happen in the end, and you might as well get it done now."

Swallowing what little saliva was in her mouth, Bulma stared at the stone building in front of her. It did not seem like a good idea to her, that it would be too much, too fast. Twelve years was a lot of time to catch up on in a matter of days, and finding out what happened in such an artificial way left her more than a little terrified that in the end, it might do more harm than good. However, Goku had made one very strong point, one that she could not ignore. If it did take her too long to fully get her life back on track, she might end up losing everything she ever had. Her friends and family had been more than patient with her so far, but that patience was bound to run out someday. And where was the point in remembering what she had, only to realize she had lost it all along the way?

"Okay," she softly told her friend. "Let's do this."

/

Goten sat on the floor, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap. "Gohan?" he meekly asked. "Is he going to be okay?"

The older brother frowned as he worked on his young charge, unsure of how to answer the question. Goten could be a very emotional child, and he was not well versed in how to handle potentially bad news. However, Gohan did not want to lie to his brother, knowing full well that once trust was broken, it could be extremely difficult to reform. "Hey, Goten," he finally settled on, "can you do me a big favor?"

The child was on his feet in a heartbeat. "What do you need?"

"Can you go fill a pitcher with ice water, and bring that and some towels in here?"

Goten was gone in a flash, and for that, Gohan was grateful. Trunks had started having another episode while they had been outside, and while Gohan had been anticipating it, Goten had not. It had started out subtly enough. Trunks had definitely been shorter in temper than he had normally been, and his actions had been more aggressive, but Goten had simply figured that Trunks had been having a bad day and let it slide. Gohan had recognized the early warning signs, and had attempted to get Goten to head for the house before it got ugly, but separating those two boys was never an easy task. In the end, when the screaming and the surging started, and Trunks had seemed completely out of his mind as he clawed at his skin and thrashed about, Goten had been right there to watch, to hear, to feel the agony.

Gohan had restrained the maniacal child, and had tried to keep the scenario as peaceful as possible for his brother's sake, but there was no way to avoid the outcome. With Goten watching, he had been forced to strike Trunks ruthlessly enough to render the hysterical boy unconscious. It was a move that had horrified Goten, but even little Goten had understood that Trunks had needed to be stopped. The episode was violent and miserable, something unlike anything Goten had ever seen before. It had definitely frightened the boy.

The flight back to the Son home had been fast, with Goten sobbing questions about what was wrong with his friend. Up until that moment, Goten had only known bits and pieces of what was wrong with his friend. He had no idea that it was something so terrible.

With Goten out of the room, Gohan was finally able to focus all his attention on Trunks. The little prince was not awake, but he was hardly resting peacefully. Spasms wracked his body, his breath was rapid and shallow, and even in his unconscious state, Trunks grit his teeth with such severity it seemed they would shatter at any moment.

"Okay," Gohan softly spoke to himself, "you're going to get through this, kid. Just stick with me here. You're going to be fine."

The teenaged boy wished dearly that he truly believed his own words. He wanted to offer true comfort, to assure everyone that Trunks was in no danger at all and that everything would end happily. However, no matter how badly Gohan hated admitting it to himself, there was more than a shadow of doubt in his mind. Trunks clearly needed help, but there was only so much Gohan could do alone. His own ascension induced episodes were little more than a painful haze of repressed misery inside his mind. The majority of it had been spent restrained, sedated, and with Piccolo and Vegeta keeping him on a very, very short leash. He knew that patience was needed, and that Trunks was in agony, but just what exactly needed to be done was lost on poor Gohan.

Vegeta would have the best idea how to keep things as controlled as possible, there was no doubt of that. But as of the last time Gohan had been contacted by any of the others, the senior prince was also being kept in an unconscious state. Vegeta had pushed himself well beyond even his own psychotic limits, to the point where his system had begun to shut down completely. Injuries could be healed, but if there was nothing inside the body to maintain homeostasis, then the body would only give way again and again until it could not be healed any further. Intravenous nutrients and sedatives were being constantly administered. Vegeta would not be available for a while.

Piccolo had been there during Gohan's surges, but had been there more so as a restrainer and bringer of comfort. After all, calm assurances were hardly Vegeta's forte. But while Piccolo could probably lend _some_ assistance, the knowledge of Saiyan physiology was as much a mystery to him as it was to everyone else. There had only been two people on the planet who had seemed to fully understood what was happening, why it was happening, and how to keep it contained. One was unconscious. The other could not remember any of it.

"You're going to be okay," he finally said again, hearing his little brother ascend the staircase. Goten burst into the room, the requested supplies in his hands. Eagerly, he thrust them into his brother's hands, once again taking his seat on the floor, cross legged and quiet.

"Goten," Gohan gently asked, "Mom's still downstairs, right?"

"Yeah," the child quietly but quickly answered.

"And Bulma's gone?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Can you do me a favor and tell Mom that I'd like to see her up here? I need to talk to her alone for a moment." He noticed the panicked look his brother was giving him, and did his best to return it with an assuring smile. "Sometimes it takes a Mommy to make things better."

Relaxing only slightly, Goten mumbled, "Okay," before heading out for his next task.

On the bed, Trunks' back arched up, a rough spasm shooting through his entire little body. Gohan placed a hand on the boy's chest, softly pressing down as he whispered calming words, keeping a wary eye on any signs that Trunks would wake up. His own sanity felt as though it was starting to crumble as his attempts to soothe the boy seemed to prove futile. Gohan wanted to beg the child to be alright, to plead for him to relax. It would have been a pointless action, but in his own exhausted and overtaxed mind, he was getting closer and closer to losing rationality.

Chi-Chi softly knocked before entering the room. "Gohan, honey?" she asked. "What can I do to help?"

For the first time in a long time, Gohan felt his lower lip quiver. It was too much. It was all just too much. "I don't know what to do," he whispered. He looked like he was going to cry as he looked up at his mother, but he continued to fight to keep it in. "I can't fix this. I can't make it better."

"Shh," Chi-Chi gently hushed, approaching her son. She tenderly held him close, rocking him just as she had when he had been a little boy. "You've already done enough," she softly praised. "You don't have to do anymore. Everything will be fine, Gohan. We'll take it from here."

/

"Hello!" Goku called out as they walked in the front door. "Anybody home?"

A shuffle and a grumble sounded down the hall before a stout figure appeared. "Good lord, Goku, don't you know how to call ahead?"

"For you?" the Saiyan chuckled. "Baba, you can see the future. You should know I'm coming!"

"Well I'm not doing it all the time, now, am I?" the old sorceress snapped. "My life does not completely revolve around my crystal ball, and it certainly does not revolve around watching _your activity_ in my crystal ball. I do have other things to do, you know!"

Goku frowned. "But you divine for people, and I don't see anyone here for you to divine for. What, are we really interrupting?"

"Well, no," she admitted, "but…"

"Great!" the Saiyan willfully interrupted. "So bring out your fighters, I'll knock 'em all down at once, and you can start showing Bulma everything that's missing in her memory. Then she'll be all fixed, we can get everyone back where they belong, and we'll all live happily ever after. So, where are the fighters?"

The old crone frowned. "Goku," she cautiously spoke, "come with me." The man began to approach with the heiress in tow, but Baba held up a wrinkled hand. "No, I need just Goku at first."

The two friends exchanged shrugs, neither one of them sure what the old crone wanted. In the past she had done her job for the payment of either money or fighting. Perhaps she had found a way to increase her revenue that went beyond Goku's raw power or Bulma's overwhelming bank accounts. It was quite possible that the fortune teller had amassed her own grand fortunes and had grown bored with her private tournaments. Quietly, the Saiyan followed Baba to one of her rooms.

"What's up?" Goku asked.

Floating around a table, Baba frowned. "I hold my suspicions for why you are here," she slowly started, "and if that is your purpose, then I'm not sure that it's such a good idea."

The warrior groaned and flopped into a chair. "Don't tell me I have to convince you, too," he pitifully whined.

"A person's memory is a sacred thing," Baba explained. "And they are not simply recollections of events. They are private thoughts and feelings. True memories hold deep emotion in them. The greater the emotional tie, the greater the memory."

Goku raised an eyebrow. "Wait, are you telling me that you won't do it at all, or that you can show her things that happened but not what she thought of them?"

A moment passed in silence as Baba contemplated her answer. "I am only capable of showing her events," she explained. "But whether I am capable of showing her these moments or not is not the issue. I am uncertain whether or not it is a wise idea to blindly show her what happened."

"You're not blindly showing her anything," Goku argued back. "These are things that already happened to her, and things that she needs to know. And I don't know if you've been keeping track of us at all, but things have gone to hell since she lost her memories, and I for one am sick of it. Her entire life, especially her family, have totally fallen apart. Are you seriously telling me that it's better to let this take the 'natural way'?"

"Goku…" But Baba found that she could not strongly argue against him. As bad an idea as she thought it might be, there was no denying that keeping her in the dark was causing chaos. "Very well," she relented. "But if you wish for me to do this, you cannot be in here with her. You have to go away, and neither you nor anyone else will be permitted to return until I tell you otherwise. I will likely be keeping her here for several days, and any interruptions will, I promise you, destroy all your efforts."

A pout formed on the warrior's face. "Aw, but I wanted to be here for that!" He sulked, but he understood the situation. "Alright, fine, I won't come back or let anyone else come back until you let us know that it's okay."

"Good boy," the crone mockingly praised. "Well, since you are so insistent on this happening, whether I think it's a good idea or not, you have earned the right to the request. I'll do it."

"Thanks, Baba!" Goku responded. "So, where are you fighters?"

The old woman blinked incredulously. "Are you quite mad, boy?" she hissed. "They all went into hiding the moment you appeared here. They're terrified of you!"

"You know, I didn't hurt them _that_ badly…"

"Just go," the crone dismissed. "And send the little amnesiac in." Goku stood and left with a kind word, leaving Baba to contemplate how, precisely, she was going to navigate through the difficult situation. She had a very bad feeling about the idea as a whole. However, Goku did make a fairly good argument, and he could easily meet her terms and conditions for her powers of divination. And she knew that if nothing changed soon, then perhaps things really would be too difficult to repair.

With reluctance in her steps, Bulma entered the room. "So, you're going to help me?"

"I will show you what you ask," the fortune teller cryptically told the heiress. "Just as I did the last time you asked this of me…"


	13. Chapter 13

"What do you mean I've been here before?" Bulma asked. "I mean, I know we came with Goku when we were kids, when we needed to find that one last dragon ball…"

"No, no, not that at all," the old crone interrupted. "I am speaking about the last time you came specifically to look into the past."

Bulma's eyes grew enormous. "When I came to do what?"

"Come," the old crone commanded. "There is much we need to discuss."

"Wait, tell me what the hell is going on here!" the heiress demanded again. "What the hell do you mean I've been here before? When was I here before? Did I lose my memory when I was younger or something? What's going on?"

Baba groaned, floating down a hallway on her crystal ball. "You're worse than a chattering monkey," she complained. "Listen, if you want any answers at all, just do us a favor and shut up for a while, will you? Your incessant whining always did give me a headache."

"Hey! You can't…"

"Do you want help or not?" the fortune teller bluntly interrupted.

With a frown on her face, Bulma looked slightly away. It had not been her idea to see the old woman in the first place, and she really was apprehensive about what exactly might be revealed to her, but there was a morbid curiosity in her that would not allow her to turn back. "Sorry," she finally mumbled, an apology lacking any sincerity.

But Baba did not care that the words were less than heart felt. As long as it got the other woman to hold her tongue for a few minutes, she was happy with it. And so she moved on, leading them through twists and turns that Bulma did not recognize from her previous visits. The scientist dearly wanted to ask why she and her friends had never seen that part of the temple before, but Baba's threat of taking away all and any help still rang in her ears. There was a chance to find out what had been missing from her mind, and she would not do anything to jeopardize it.

At long last they arrived in a room with a waterfall cascading down an entire wall. Again, Bulma felt the desire to ask how a waterfall could be falling inside a room in a building in the middle of the desert, but she tucked her question away, settling for a simpler, "What is this place?"

"A room for reflection," Baba mysteriously answered. "A room where intimate questions of one's own life can be answered."

"Oh," Bulma said, nodding along. "I get it. The waterfall is some sort of symbolic thing that helps me focus and narrow my thoughts, allowing me to bring back things that I may have forgotten."

Baba turned to the heiress and scoffed. "What? That's not even close to what that is!"

"It's not?"

"No! The waterfall was a decorative choice by me because I happened to like it and I had a lot of money to spend on it." Shaking her head, she floated around to the far side of the room, muttering a disdainful, "Unbelievable," on her way.

Bulma frowned. "Well, what is this, then?"

"As I just finished telling you," the crone bitterly replied, her back still turned, "it is a room for reflection. You sit and reflect for a while. I'm getting myself a drink."

"But…"

It did not matter what Bulma said, though, because Baba was already on her way out of the room. With a furious huff, the woman sat cross legged in the middle of the floor. There were no apparent chairs to be sat upon, so the floor had to suffice. "Sit and reflect," the heiress grumbled. "Oh, great, like I hadn't thought of that one already. Like the only thing that's been keeping me from remembering anything is that I haven't tried _thinking_. Yeah, that's what the problem is. My life is an absolute shambles right now because I, a certifiable genius, was not smart enough to consider _thinking_ as an option. I swear, if that old bat is just trying to humiliate me and thinks she'll get away with it, she's got another thing coming!"

Angrily, she flopped on to her back. "Okay, okay, let's try this. Think about my past. I am thinking about my past. I am thinking about my past with my family, I am thinking happy thoughts, I am thinking…I am thinking…I'm thinking this is stupid and getting me nowhere fast."

"That's because you're not reflecting," Baba scolded, entering the room once more. "You're projecting."

"What the hell's the difference?" Bulma demanded.

Baba rolled her eyes. "You were trying to be the point of origin of a thought, the projector. Here is where something else projects a thought at you, and all you can do is reflect it."

The answer hardly satisfied the heiress. "What does that even mean?"

"It means shut up, will you?" the crone snapped. "I swear, you are one of the most demanding patrons I've ever had! People come from all over the world and offer everything they have in order to get me to divine something for them. Would it kill you to show a little respect?"

It took a great deal of physical effort for Bulma to keep herself from snapping back. While it was true that most people who came to the fortune teller risked life and limb to do so, Bulma Briefs has hardly 'most people'. Not only was she not new to the powers of divination that the woman had to offer, she had seen bigger, more spectacular, and more impressive things. Compared to the powers of the dragon balls, looking in a crystal ball just lacked pizazz. However, that one skill that old cow had was the one that Bulma needed at the moment.

"So, how do I get my past reflected onto me? Are you going to channel something into your crystal ball?"

Baba dismissed her with a wave. "Oh, don't be so archaic," she chided. "For a pitiful divination that only shows location, I use my crystal. For something like this, since we'll be here a while…" She waved her hand again, aiming a remote that Bulma had not noticed earlier at a wall. "…I like to have a little more style."

As the wall opened up and revealed a screen large enough for a theater, Bulma felt an odd chill run down her spine. Something about the whole scenario seemed familiar to her. She had done it before, she realized. She had been in the back room of Baba's temple, with the waterfall and the large screen. She had asked for something large enough to require the help of a fortune teller.

"I know this," she whispered.

"Oh?" the crone asked, a smirk appearing on her wrinkled features. "Having a memory, are you?"

"Not a full one," Bulma softly answered. "I mean, I don't have a proper memory, but I know I've done this before…"

Baba sighed. "Well, at least it's a step in the right direction. Now, before we go any further, I need to explain this to you. What I am able to do from here is pull up an image from a person's past. I can show you a sort of third party viewpoint on a situation. I can't tell you what you were feeling or thinking or anything else. That is beyond my realm of power."

A small trail of sweat formed on Bulma's neck, slowly trickling down to her collar. "Okay."

"These images may or may not hold any affect at all on your current state of memory," Baba warned. "And even if I show you what has happened in your life, there is no promise that these moments will invoke the same emotions now as they did when you experienced them. Without that emotional response, this may end up being a futile process."

"But it might work, right?" Bulma pushed. "There's a chance that this will help trigger memories or something, isn't there?"

"Possibly," the fortune teller warned. "But don't get your hopes up, okay?"

With a mild nod of her head, Bulma turned her aim toward the screen. "Okay. Where should we start?"

Baba frowned slightly. The idea of using images to jog someone's memory was as new to her as it was to the heiress. It had never been attempted before, and anything she offered could only be a best guess. "We will start with the last time you were in this room," she decided. With any luck, being in the same room as the image would help a little. Besides, it was the only image that Baba herself had been witness to within the missing years. If anything was going to help the old woman determine whether or not it may work, it was going to be that moment.

As Baba began to work her magic, Bulma squirmed on the floor. "You know," she commented, "if you were going to spring for an epic indoor waterfall and a home theater, why wouldn't you spring for a couch?"

"What do I need a couch for?" Baba grumpily shot back. "I like sitting on my orb."

"Don't you ever have guests over?" the blue eyed scientist asked.

Baba scowled. "I am not one for large social engagements, and I don't like to share. Anyone who has bothered to make it all the way back here can deal with the floor or get out. Now hush! I'm trying to concentrate!"

Though Bulma was not happy about how she had once again been scolded like a naughty child, she could appreciate the need for concentration in work. After all, she had long since lost count of the number of times her own nerves had been brought beyond the boiling point by a nuisance that would not leave her be and allow her to focus.

Slowly, and image began to form on the screen. "Hey, that's me!" the heiress blurted out. She quickly slapped a hand over her mouth, and she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks with embarrassment at her actions. It was a childish move on her part, but there had been something so novel in the idea of seeing herself on the screen that she had not been able to keep it in.

Withholding her scornful comments on such juvenile behavior, Baba kept her own eyes on the screen, channeling her focus to keep the image moving. Both women watched silently as a much younger Bulma slammed her fist on Baba's front door, demanding entrance while at the same time both threatening and bribing the fortune teller. "Not much on class, are you?" Baba muttered.

"Takes one to know one," Bulma automatically answered, already regretting her tactics. She was not sure what was making her feel so much younger in the moment, but she was not actively trying to stop it.

The image played on…

_Bulma shoved her hands firmly on her hips as the door opened. "It's about damn time!"_

_The little pink spirit simply offered a mocking smile in return for her attitude. "I'm sorry, do you have an appointment?"_

"_What the hell do you mean do I have an appointment?" the heiress snapped. "We never needed an appointment before!"_

_The spirit shook his head. "Well, since you did just cut in front of all those men out there to come straight to the front of the line…"_

"_Oh, cut the crap," Bulma interrupted. "You and I both know damn well that these clowns aren't going to beat any of that old bat's so-called champions. They'll get massacred and you know it. Now I actually have the means to get her services, so let me in."_

"_Is that to mean that you will be a cash customer?" the spirit asked._

_A slightly wicked smirk appeared on Bulma's face. "More than your precious mistress has ever seen in her life is my annual shoe budget," she bragged. "You tell her that if she wants to make an easy ten million, she better let me cut straight to the front of the line."_

…

"Wow, I really was a brat," Bulma stated.

Beside her, Baba rolled her eyes. "Yes, and the sun rises in the east and my brother is a pervert. Now stop stating the obvious and hush!"

…

"_God, you're a pain in the ass," Baba grumbled as she approached the heiress. "Alright, alright, let's see the cash."_

_As cocky as ever, Bulma pulled a capsule from her back pocket and tossed it in the middle of the room. As it opened with a puff, she crossed her arms over her chest and smirked. "I think you'll find everything you're looking for in there."_

_The crone floated down near the pile of money, her greedy eyes taking it all in. She picked up a few bundles of bills, fingering them, checking to ensure that they were legitimate. On close inspection, one could see the faintest hint of drool appearing in the corner of her mouth as she gazed upon the vast sum of money. Rare was it that she had a cash customer arrive. Most of her seekers came with only violence to offer, and while she did enjoy satiating her bloodlust by watching the fighters miserably fail, she almost lived for the giddy thrill of a big payday._

"_Well?" Bulma demanded. "Good enough?"_

_Baba blinked for a moment, remembering her company. "Oh, yes, this is just fine," she assured. "Now, what is it you want me to divine for you today, hm? What precious trinket have you lost?"_

"_I haven't lost anything," the heiress assured. "I'm here for information."_

_The fortune teller grumbled, "I'm not a private detective."_

_Bulma took a bold step forward. "Fine," she sneered, reaching for the money. "I'll just take all of this back then and…"_

"_No, no, no, no, no," Baba interrupted. "That won't be necessary. I, uh, just wanted to make sure you were aware that it was not my primary job. Come, tell me what it is you are here to learn."_

…

Bulma leaned forward, staring wide eyed at the screen. Judging by the length of her hair in the picture and the clothes she was wearing, it possibly had been about a year after Namek. What could she have needed to know so badly back then?

…

"_I want to look into someone's background," she firmly told the old woman._

_Baba shook her head, hopping off of her ball. "I see," she sighed. "So tell me, are we looking up whether or not your boyfriend has cheated on you? Or are you more interested in learning about the raving psychotic you asked to move in with you?"_

_Bulma seemed slightly stunned by the question, but did not let it slow her down. "The raving psychotic," she answered. "I want to know what he did before he came here."_

_The crone shot the younger woman an incredulous look. "We know what he did before he came here," she pointed out. "Even I do. He's not exactly secretive of his bloody past."_

"_Yeah, well, I want to know how it started," Bulma pushed on. "I need to know."_

_Despite the fact that it could very easily cost her that gorgeous pile of money, Baba felt somehow compelled to make sure that the heiress knew what she was getting into. Normally she would have done whatever the customer asked, not giving a damn for the aftermath. But the heiress was friends with Goku, and she was walking into extremely dangerous territory that may have lasting consequences. "Why, girl, are you so hell bent on seeing something that will almost certainly give you nightmares?"_

_The heiress looked away slightly, her first sign of dropping her guard. "Because I need to understand."_

"_Understand what?"_

"_Him!" she shouted back. "I need to understand him! I can't wrap my head around why he is the way he is, or why he does what he does! It makes no sense to me! It's almost like he's two separate people, and I just don't get it. Some days he seems to be as much a monster as he ever was, and on others he's almost a real person! There has to be something, somewhere in his past, that will help me understand why he's like that, and you're going to help me find what it is."_

…

"He had been at your place for about a year at that point, if I recall correctly," Baba explained, confirming Bulma's earlier suspicion.

Bulma nodded. It was the only response she could get her body to.

…

"_Well, if you're certain," the old crone relented. "I still think this is a terrible idea, but far be it from me to stand in the way of the foolishness of falsely believed youth."_

"_Hey!" Bulma snapped. "I'm still young!"_

"_You're thirty, get over it," the crone snipped._

_Bulma huffed and glared down at the little woman. "First of all, I look fantastic for my age. And secondly, I'm still incredibly young compared to you!"_

"_Good for you," Baba sneered, her tone clearly mocking. "Now let's get on with this, shall we? I'd like to get this done and over with. There are dozens of young men out there just begging to get beaten down, and I have no intention of missing that."_

"_Sadist," Bulma accused._

"_Brat," Baba shot back._

_The heiress sneered at the shriveled little woman, but she said nothing more at that moment. With her arms angrily crossed, she followed Baba through the palace and into the room with the waterfall. "Why the hell do you have an indoor waterfall?" she asked._

"_Because I knew it would bother obnoxious brats like you," the crone snipped in return. "Now tell me, what exactly are we looking for?"_

_Bulma rolled her eyes. "I told you, I want to know about his past."_

_Baba sneered in return. "I don't know if you're smart enough to figure this out, girl, but 'past' is a broad term, and he's had a lot of it. If you want any hope at all of seeing something you're looking for, you need to know what you're looking for."_

"_Well if I knew that, I wouldn't be here, would I?" Bulma fought back. "He won't tell me a damn thing, so I guess we'll start wherever the hell you take us."_

"_Yes, that narrows things down," Baba sarcastically shot back. "Now stop being so insolent and put a little thought into what you are asking! Are you looking for early childhood, late childhood, teenage years, early adulthood, last Thursday, what? Because if you don't give at least a vague description, I'll start with when he was an infant and wait for you to get bored and go home."_

…

Bulma rocked forward onto her hands and knees, and her face drained of color. "Oh god," she whispered. "I remember…"

Baba paused the image on the screen, her own interest peaked. "What are you seeing?"

But the heiress seemed almost catatonic, lost in her own mind as something rushed back to her. Her body began to tremble, and her breathing grew faster and faster. Baba monitored closely, completely unaware of what to do. There was nothing in her past that trained her for assisting someone through a traumatic moment. Besides, she had no idea just what, exactly, the younger woman was remembering.

Several minutes later, Bulma slowly stabilized her breathing. "I…I have to go…"

"What did you remember?" Baba asked.

"I have to go," the heiress repeated, staggering to her feet.

The crone gave her client a concerned look. "You are hardly in any condition to take yourself anywhere," she chided.

"No, no, I need to go now," Bulma insisted. With little grace and clearly still shaken up by what she had just remembered, she began to run for the door. She was only barely aware of the fortuneteller shouting out to her, insisting for her to stop. She had to leave. She had to get out. The moment she saw sunlight, she pulled out her phone and called Goku, demanding that he pick her up immediately.

As the heiress disappeared with her friend, Baba frowned. Something was very wrong about what had just happened…


	14. Chapter 14

Bulma stood quietly over her estranged lover's body. The worst of Vegeta's wounds had closed up, but he was yet to regain consciousness. From what the others were saying, it could take days for him to wake up, and longer still for him to truly move about again. His body was depleted of resources, and it would take a long time for those stores to be built back up.

She had gotten Goku to bring him back to the compound, the only place she found any vague sense of comfort at all. Seeing his broken body on the Lookout had almost made her lose her nerve, but it was a step that she needed to take. It had been too hard and too long on all of them for her to not rise to the occasion. Her friends were right, it was time for her to do whatever she could to mend the fractures. No matter how hard the situation was on her, she owed it to her family to take the reins.

So there she sat, looking at her…her what? Husband? Boyfriend? Friend with benefits? She still had no idea where their relationship technically stood. But no matter what they were calling it, it was an important bond that could not be ignored. Whether her feelings about him were the same as they were before the accident did not matter. She at least owed them acknowledgement of what they had. And at that moment, as she listened to the soft sound of the heart rate monitor beep at a slow, steady rate, she could not believe that it had gotten so out of control.

He looked so frail that it frightened her.

"You know you're an idiot, right?" she softly told him. "You took it way too far. You always took it way too far. I mean, I know that I haven't exactly been a contender for spouse of the year lately, but really? Taking yourself to the brink of death? Again? You need to learn some new tricks for coping with your feelings."

Vegeta showed no signs of having heard her, not that Bulma had been expecting one. "This has always been your way," she went on. "When something is getting to you, _really_ getting to you, you go through this weird, masochistic, refuse to talk about anything to anyone for any reason phase. How many times have you nearly killed yourself because you're not comfortable talking?"

Bulma slid herself from her chair to the edge of her bed. "But I guess it's a little hypocritical of me to be lecturing you about this, huh? Ever since I came home from the hospital, I haven't wanted to talk about any of my problems to anyone. I didn't want to openly admit that anything was really wrong. I guess I thought that if I just made myself fall back into my old habits, things would just magically work out and be just like they used to be. You all told me that it was going to take more than that, but I wouldn't listen. I wanted everything to be back to normal, and I didn't want it to be my fault that it wasn't. So I guess I'm an idiot too, huh?

"Goku had an idea," she went on, a sad smile on her face. "He thought that maybe that old bad in the desert could have me look into her crystal ball and that it would restore some of my broken memories. I know, who would have guessed that Goku of all people would come up with an idea like that? He's a total goof, but I've got to admit, it wasn't a half bad thought. So he took me to her temple, and, well, I'll spare you the boring details. Except that she can project her summoned images onto a big home theater screen. Why the hell have we been looking into a two and a half foot ball when we've had _that_ option lying around?"

She shook her head, regaining her focus. "Sorry, it's been a weird week. Well, you know that, don't you?" With a soft sigh, she slid his fingers over his. Again, he gave no sign that he was even aware that someone was in the room with him. "Anyway, apparently I already knew that, because it would seem that I asked her that a long time ago. I was curious about you.

"You probably won't believe this, but I actually did gain a few memories back while I was there today." She lightly gripped on to his hand, hoping to feel a squeeze that she knew was not going to come. "I don't know what about it triggered them. We never even got to the specific things I had Baba look into last time. But they came, and I needed to see you as soon as I could."

A small lump formed in her throat as the memory came upon her again. Most of the images and feelings that had come back to her were of a happier nature, but not this one. This one, though, made her heart ache in a way she would never have thought possible.

"I told you," she very slowly explained, "that I remembered certain things, and that I thought it was enough to make all of our problems go away. I thought that remembering who our enemies were and that I had once felt something for you was enough. But I discovered something. I found out that knowing that something once existed isn't nearly enough to force it to exist again. Sometimes things go out forever. Sometimes it's just extinct. And over the last few days, I've been giving in to that concept. I've been playing with the idea that maybe we had something special once upon a time, but without having access to my feelings, it just didn't exist anymore. I was getting ready to walk away from it because I really didn't know what it was that brought us together. I knew that something had, and I knew that it was special, but I had no idea what it was."

Her eyes slowly closed, and she forced herself to take a steadying breath. "I remembered," she whispered, "another time when I was getting ready to walk away from you. I was so mad at you. I didn't think there was any way that you and I could even hope to go the distance. Our son was so young, and you and I couldn't have been at longer odds with each other. We were miserable, and can you blame us? It took a long time for both of us to understand just what we were up against. Our lives were both changing as such a crazy rate, but neither one of us was really up to the challenge. Trunks came around, and I got lost in this fairy tale dream of what a family was and tried to force you to fit in to it. And you had just achieved the state of Super Saiyan, something you had coveted your whole life. You were gearing up for the battle against the androids, something that we had heard would essentially bring about the end of the world. Settling down and playing with a baby was the furthest thing from your mind.

"I screamed about you not being there for our son," she lamented, "and you would scream about the role of a warrior and how you refused to acknowledge anything that could be a weakness, even us. By the time the battle came around, we weren't together anymore. And I think we had both made up our minds that it just wasn't going to work out between us. We were ready to cut and run. Oddly enough, that actually seemed to make things better between us. When we no longer expected anything from each other, we started to get along again."

Suddenly her breath caught in her throat, and she found herself forced to look away from him. "And just when things started looking good again," she whispered, "everything changed."

The memory hit her again, and her whole world spun as that painful part of her life came crashing back against her. It felt like the entire room was spinning. She nearly fell off the edge of the bed, and would have if not for the insanely intense grip she managed to maintain on it. The entire process was almost more than she could bear.

"I remember," she tried telling him again, her voice cracking slightly, "what happened after the battle. After Cell was dead. After the future version of our son went home. After everyone had gone away. After the battle high was out of your system completely."

Her eyes stayed away from him, but she gently began rubbing his stilled hand with her thumb and index finger. "We never talked about that time," she weakly went on. "I remember that. I remember that we never went back to it, never let ourselves think about it. And because of that, I don't know how you really felt during all of it. We're the same like that sometimes. We just want to move on past the hard part, and never look back.

"But today I had to look back at it."

She continued to rub his hand, and she spared him a glance from the corner of her eye. "Trunks had just left us," she recalled, slowly switching her gaze back toward the blank wall. "You weren't training on those days, but that wasn't so strange. After all, you'd just finished a battle. It's natural to take a couple days off. For those first few days after the fight, you seemed alright. A little quieter than usual, but nothing so out of the ordinary that I thought anything of it. And I was trying so hard to come to terms with Goku's death that I didn't really watch you too carefully. There was no reason to. Or at least, that's what I thought."

Her hand stopped rubbing. Her grip, though, tightened hard. "How long were you quiet before I realized it?" she asked, finally looking back at him. "Hours? Days? Weeks? How long did you stay totally silent before I even noticed something was wrong?

"How did I not see it until it reached the next stage?"

The memory came back again, honing in on one particular moment. She wanted to shove it away, to never look at it and pretend that it never happened, but she knew that would have been wrong. She fought with it, looking straight into it with her mind's eye. She refused to back away from her past any longer because it might hold something she did not like.

"It had been days since I'd even seen you," she hoarsely whispered. "I didn't think anything of it at the time because you pulled disappearing acts all the time, and you almost never gave me any warning when you did. I figured you were just brooding somewhere. But you weren't. You'd been home the entire time. You'd been three doors down from me the whole time. You'd been sitting in our future son's room, and you hadn't left it in days.

"When I finally found you," she painfully recalled, "you wouldn't talk to me. At first I thought you were just being a stubborn pain in the ass. You know, like you usually are. So I said a few things to you, and then I yelled a few things at you, and then I left you alone. But then I went back the next day, and you were still there. And the day after that, and the day after that. You weren't leaving, you weren't talking, I don't even think you were eating. You were just sitting there, on the floor of his bedroom, staring at the wall. I never did find out if you were ever aware that I had been in the room, much less yelling at you all that time.

"And then, about a week after I noticed you there, something changed. I went in, and you were still in your spot, but the wall wasn't empty anymore. You'd moved at some point, and you had gotten the armor that Trunks had been wearing when…when Cell killed him. I didn't even know that we had it in the compound. I thought he had either gotten rid of it or taken it with him. It still had his blood on it. It was flaky and browning, but it was still clearly his blood. And next to it was your own armor from only a few years earlier. It was the armor you had on when _you_ were killed. They were lined up with each other, sitting in that same spot you had been staring at for a week."

She faced him fully and moved her hand from his fingers to his cheek, cupping it gently. "I sat down with you," she recalled, "and I waited with you for a long time. You still weren't talking. Hell, you were barely blinking. I think six or seven hours passed as I sat with you. I didn't know what to do. You were so…I don't know what word to use. Lost? Bothered? Overwhelmed? I don't know, Vegeta, because you never told me exactly what you were feeling. You barely told me anything at all.

"You did tell me something, though," she went on, looking at his pale features. "You had your eyes straight ahead, still looking at the armor, and all you said was, 'It shouldn't have been him'. I remember asking you what you meant by that, but all you did was say that same thing again. It shouldn't have been him. That was all you ever told me. I tried talking to you, but you didn't speak again. I tried bringing you food, but you still wouldn't eat it. It was another week before you left the room as far as I know. It was two and a half more before you talked again. And then you slowly got back into your old routine, and you pretended it never happened. And I went right along with you on that. After how miserable I was when you were shutting down, I was just happy that you were back up. So I didn't push it. You were up, you were moving, you were eating, you were training. I didn't care what had been bothering you, so long as it was over."

Another sigh escaped her. "You never talked to me about what you felt at that time," she softly lamented. "And I never talked to you about how I felt. Watching you waste away, watching you lock yourself off in your own mind, it scared me. We weren't romantically involved with each other at that point. Our fling was well over, and our real relationship hadn't started. But you were still an important part of my life, and watching you self-destruct from the inside out frightened me. You had never shown me anything like that before. I'd seen you physically abuse yourself when you got stressed out a thousand times, but never mentally. And during those days when you wouldn't talk or move or respond to anything, I was genuinely afraid that you were going to stay that way forever. I thought you had been pushed one step too far, and that I wasn't going to get you back. I thought you were just…gone. And that was when I realized just how much I had come to depend on having you as a part of my life.

"I didn't know, Vegeta," she defended. "When I stopped involving you after the accident, when I treated you like the enemy, when I kept pushing you away when you were actually trying to do what was best for me, I didn't know. How could I have known that you were going to start up with this again? How was I supposed to know that you were going to stop eating and sleeping like you should be? I know you haven't taken it as far as you did last time, and I'm so grateful that it hasn't gotten that bad. But holy crap, Vegeta, you've traded out the gravity room for taking on the three strongest people on the planet that are not you, and doing it without any rest or recovery at all. What the hell did you think was going to happen? I know you, you're more than smart enough to know what this would do to you if you kept this up. You couldn't possibly have thought that it was going to just be a quick form of stress relief that was…did you?

"Did you think this was more controlled? Is that why you did it? Because you needed an out, but there would be someone to stop you if you started to really lose it again? Was that the only way you could ask for help?" She shook her head and closed her eyes. "That's it, isn't it? That's why you've been pushing it so far. And I missed it. You disappeared for three days and showed up looking like hell, and I let it go completely because I had 'better' things to worry about. Because _my_ life was falling apart."

Getting to her feet, she stretched out her sore back. "In my defense," she told his stilled body, "I was going through a bitch of a time on my own. Trust me, if you woke up one day to find yourself severely injured and that you were missing over a third of your life, you wouldn't want to deal with anyone else's issues. Now, that being said, I would like to take this opportunity to say that you and I might very well be the two most messed up people on this planet. If either one of us was mentally stable, we probably could have handled this entire debacle much better. But let's face it, we're both self-involved, a bit manic-depressive, and above all that we're control freaks. Neither of us handle loss of control well. Like, ever. And we both do the same stupid thing. We pretend that we have control, and tell everyone else that we have control, usually when we're more lost than we've ever been. So you started this psycho sparring thing, and I insisted that I knew what I was doing to get my life back in order, and we were both lying through our teeth."

Bulma turned and sat down in the chair at his bedside, and she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "So here's what I have to say to you," she firmly stated. "I am sick of lying. I am sick of pretending. I am sick of trying to assume control over something that I clearly hold _no_ control over. And I know you're the same way. We want to get back to where we were, and I say we start now. I will make sure you get healthy and strong again. I will not leave you again. I will be your significant other of unknown official status again." Reaching out, she slid her fingers among his again. "And together, _together,_ Vegeta, we are going to help _our_ son through his own troubles before he turns out as screwed up as we are. I am going to confront my problems, and you're going to deal with yours. We start again, just like we did last time. And when we're ready, we'll actually talk. But I won't force it, just like you won't. I'm not going to try to make something happen when it's clearly not the right time. We'll do what has always worked for us. We'll take it one step at a time. And we will make it. Are you with me?"

Maybe it was nothing more than a figment of her imagination. Maybe it was just a dream that she was forcing into her own reality. But Bulma Briefs was certain that she felt his fingers move, and she smiled. The fight for normalcy was finally starting.


	15. Chapter 15

Bulma squirmed slightly at the small kitchen table of the Son home. The past few days, no, the past few weeks, had been more than taxing on her. The accident, her memories, the flashbacks, the pain in her family, it had all been a terrible burden. And she had been well aware of how awful it had been on her side of it. But more and more and more, she had been realizing just how arduous it had been for everyone else in her life. Enough was enough. She might not have everything she had hoped to retrieve, but she was dead set and determined to make everything right.

That did not mean that the process was going to be easy. Her friends still clearly regarded her as unstable, and her family had fallen apart altogether. Putting the pieces of her life back where they needed to be was going to be hard. And the one she needed to talk to that day would probably be the harshest one on her: her son.

Trunks had experienced more than one episode of power surges since his ascension, and had needed constant support and supervision. Gohan and Goku had taken it upon themselves to protect him from himself, but they were friends at best. What the child needed was family. Bulma felt in her heart that she was ready to step up to the task, to take her son home and give him what he needed. But that did not mean that those around her believed she could handle it. And so there she sat, at the small table of the Son family, about to have a supervised visit with her son.

The walls of the house were not particularly thick. They served their purpose well enough, keeping the elements out and providing good shelter. However, they were hardly soundproof. As such, Bulma was able to clearly hear the conversation that was occurring up the stairs in Goten's room.

"I don't want to see her."

Trunks' words cut her deeply.

"Aw, come on, kiddo," Goku said back to the boy. "Just go on down and talk to her."

"No," the child steadfastly refused. "She doesn't want us there, so I don't have to see her here. She can't have it both ways."

Goku sighed. "She's not trying to," the warrior explained. "Your mom is trying to understand a lot of stuff that's just not normal to her right now. She had a hard time, and she's working hard to try to get things how all of you want them to be. But sometimes it's really hard to make things right."

"She hasn't even been trying," Trunks shot back. "She doesn't want it all back. She just wants to pretend that none of us ever ruined her perfect little life. She's happier without us. Fine. I won't bug her anymore, but only if she doesn't bug me, either!"

While he could certainly see the boy's point, Goku never was one for taking 'no' for an answer. "Tell you what," he offered, "if you go down, and you talk to her in a nice and respectful way, I can promise you that if you don't want to go home with her today, you don't have to."

Bulma felt as though her stomach had dropped out completely. Why would he make such an offer without consulting her? That was not his decision to make!

It was quiet for a moment before Trunks said something quietly, something Bulma never heard. A minute later, a subdued Trunks was escorted down the stairs. "Remember," Goku told him before stepping back, "I'll be right here, but you need to be good."

Trunks grunted an nonverbal answer, but he did hold his temper as he took a seat at the table. "Hello," he greeted in an overly polite fashion. "How are you doing today, ma'am?"

If not for the fact that things were already tense between them, Bulma would have given him a mouthful about his smartass attitude. "I have been doing well," she responded.

"Well I'm happy to hear that."

Clearly the boy held no intention to have any real conversation with her, but she would not be deterred. "I understand that the Sons have been taking very good care of you."

Trunks shrugged one shoulder. "Well someone had to."

Upset with her or not, that boy was skating on some very thin ice. "We need to talk." When no snarky comment came from him, Bulma considered it a small victory. "You've had a rough few weeks, haven't you?"

"Give the lady a prize," the boy sneered.

Bulma's eyes narrowed. "Consider this your warning," she coolly told him. "I came here to really talk to you, and I would appreciate it if you would at least extend me a little basic human politeness." Trunks shot her a hard look, but said nothing, allowing her to remain in control. "Now I want to get some things out in the open with you," she went on. "All of us have been having a hard time. You, me, your father, your friends, we've all been put through the wringer. And I know damn well that I've been the root of all of it." Trunks opened his mouth, but his mother cut him off. "I know, I know, I owe a twenty to the damn swear jar. And now I owe fifty for a double offense."

The boy sat there, stunned for a moment. "You…you remember the jar?"

"Yes," the mother replied, just as stunned as her son was. "Apparently I do."

Trunks looked at the table, slowly running his fingers on the smooth surface as he thought about something. "Mom?"

His words were soft, barely audible to his human mother. "Yes?"

He looked away, unable to look in her direction as he asked, "Were you happier without me and Dad around?"

Bulma did as her son did, averting her gaze. "Trunks, I want to explain something to you," she quietly responded. "Ever since the accident, I have only had little bits and pieces of memories to work with. My whole life with you and your father, well, it's still not entirely clear to me. And I'm not going to lie. I did have a good life before either of you were in it." Slowly but firmly, she brought up her eye line, locking on with her son. "But I want you to understand something here and now. There has never, ever been any doubt in my mind that I have loved you, and that I still do. You have made my life so much more wonderful than I could have imagined before I had you. My memories may not be complete, but the few that I have all agree. I love you, and I would not trade you for anything in the universe."

"What about Dad?" Trunks hesitantly asked.

That was a far more complicated question, but Bulma wanted to answer it as honestly as she could. "Goku helped me," she told him. "He took me to Baba's, and I was able to remember some more things, some very important things. Our relationship was, well, not always the best one. We had a very hard time at first, and it took years for us to be as strong together as we became."

"But I thought your memories came back," Trunks pushed on. "I thought that you remembered stuff, and that's why we were living with you again."

"I know," Bulma quickly jumped back in. "I thought they were back, too. I remembered a fair amount, and I remembered that I _did_ love him. But Trunks, you need to understand something. Knowing that you felt something once upon a time is not the same as feeling it in the moment. I remembered that I had cared, and that was wonderful. But the real feelings, well, they just weren't as solid as I thought they would be."

Trunks looked away again. "So does this mean you two are getting divorced?"

_Did we ever actually get married_? Bulma wanted to ask him, but it seemed somehow wrong to ask her own child whether or not she had legitimately married the boy's father. "Remember how I told you that Goku and Baba helped me remember some things?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, some of those memories helped me understand why your father and I have been together for so long. And knowing why…" Bulma paused, trying to figure out how to explain it to her son. "Knowing that you had felt something is the first step. Knowing why you felt it is the second. And it's only after you've done those two parts that you can hope to feel what you once felt. Did that make sense?"

Trunks looked slightly confused, but he did nod. "I think so." Another awkward moment went by, neither one of them really knowing what to say, before Trunks softly spoke. "Are we going to be a family again?"

"Yes," Bulma firmly answered. She walked around the table and hugged her son. "It's not going to be as easy as any of us wanted it to be. I was like you. I had hoped that once some of the memories started coming back, everything would just magically go back to how it was. We were all disappointed when that didn't happen. And so much has changed that things will probably never be exactly the same as they used to be. But I promise you, Trunks, I promise that we will always stick together, and we will always be a family."

The little boy hugged his mother back, tears quietly rolling down his tan cheeks. "I want to go home," he whispered. "I want my parents back. I want to go home. I want to go home."

"You can come home whenever you're ready to," Bulma told him, hugging him tighter. "You can come home. You can always come home."

A throat cleared behind them, and the two members of the Briefs family looked up to see both Goku and Gohan standing behind them. "Hey, kiddo," Goku said to Trunks, "why don't you come with me for a sec? Gohan just needs to go over a couple things with your mom, and you'll be right back. Does that work for you?"

Trunks held on to his mother for a moment, suddenly feeling like a much younger child afraid to leave home for the first time. Everything had been so chaotic in his life that he felt in dire need of a greater sense of love and security. But after a bit he felt that usual sense of pride that urged him to try to take everything the way a grown up would. "Okay," he reluctantly agreed.

As Goku left with the child, Gohan turned to Bulma, a grim look on his face. "Bulma," he began, "I don't think you fully understand what it would mean to bring Trunks home with you right now."

"I know it would show my son that he still has a mother," she firmly stated. "I know that it would let him know that he still has a family that loves him. I know that right now my son feels like no one is really there for him, and that he needs stability."

"Yes, he needs stability," Gohan agreed. "But that's exactly why I don't think it's a great idea for him to go back with you just yet."

"Gohan…"

"Bulma," the teenager interrupted, "if Trunks has a flare up while he is at Capsule Corp, he will cause an unbelievable amount of damage. The only area in the city that could handle it is the gravity room, and you have no way of getting him in there after an episode starts. You literally do not have the physical ability to relocate him. And if he has an event outside of that chamber, he can, and will, level the compound. He'll bury you alive in the rubble of your own home before completely self-destructing, and there will be nothing you or he could do to stop it."

The heiress narrowed her eyes dangerously at the boy before her. "If I recall correctly," she darkly pointed out, "you, too, went through something like this, and you didn't massacre your family or need to be removed from your home."

"And that just proves," Gohan responded, sounding just as threatening, "that your memories are not complete yet."

It was a confession that Bulma had not anticipated, and she did not know how to respond other than with a soft, "What?"

Gohan shook his head, gaining his composure again. "You don't need the whole story right now," he sighed. "I'll tell you someday, but today is not that day. What you do need to know is that the only way it is even remotely safe for you to take Trunks back with you is if you have at least one, preferably a few, people there who could give him the help he needs right now. Yes, it is important to have a home, and yes, it is important that he knows his family is there for him. But neither you or, for the time being, Vegeta, could slow him down right now. Maybe in a little bit when Vegeta gets his strength back…"

"Come with us." The words were out of Bulma's mouth before she had a chance to truly consider them, but in that moment, it made perfect sense. "Come stay with us for a few days. Hell, bring the whole family if you want. Keep an eye on him. Help him out. But in the name of all that is good in this world, let my son come home. We can be a family again. We're ready for that next step. But we are never going to get there until all three of us get back under the same roof, at the same time, and work on it. I have struggled with my end of this, and I am sorry, but it is time that my family's fracture finally heals. Come with us if you have to. But my son is coming home."

The teenager bit down softly on the inside of his cheek. It was obvious that she was not going to give up without a fight, and it was equally apparent that Trunks was desperate to have his life return to normal. But it still seemed extremely dangerous to him. "Can I run a couple of ideas by you before we decide anything?"

Bulma frowned at him. "You're half my age," she pointed out. "When did you begin controlling my life?"

"Not relevant," the young man countered. "But we need to know that all of you will be safe. That's the main reason we've had Trunks here, remember? So sit down with me and help me come up with a way to get all of you home in a safe manner, because if we can't, then Bulma, I can't let him leave."

At first she was going to yell at him, to demand that as Trunks was her son, it was her decision when or when not he should be returned. But reason quickly found its way into her thoughts. Gohan's points were all valid, and things did need to be addressed. It was not about pride or vanity. It was not even about her. It was about her family, and if she was serious about getting things rebuilt, she had to be willing to compromise. "All right," she relented. "We'll figure something out. But you and I are not leaving this table at all until we agree on the terms."

And that is exactly what they did.


	16. Chapter 16

"You're a moron."

They were such familiar words to wake up to in that household, and yet to him they sounded almost out of place. Too much time had passed since he had heard them spoken to him in such a way. It had to be a dream. It had to be part of the trauma. It had to be that he was still in a coma. It could not possibly be real.

A groan came from the side. "I know you can hear me. You might as well open your eyes."

Vegeta thought about it for a moment, wondering briefly if it was a wise decision before sliding his eyes open. There she was, sitting at the desk, watching over him. It was a stance he had seen her in more times than he had bothered to track in their time together. It was the same story every time. For whatever reason he had drastically wreaked havoc on his body, and she had fretted over whether or not he had pushed himself that one step too far. Slowly the events leading to his incapacitation came back to mind. _Oh, yeah, that…_

Bulma ran her hand over her fuzz covered head. "We are one royally screwed up pair of people," she announced. "And you can't argue that."

"I could," he groaned, trying to sit up, "but I would be blatantly lying as I did it."

"Fair enough," Bulma chuckled. "So I see that you've gone with the traditional self-inflicted torture route of coping with stress."

The prince shrugged. "It seemed the natural counterpart to your method of demanding a quick fix and then getting pissy and self-involved when it didn't happen." Very slowly he turned, allowing his legs to dangle off the edge of the bed. "You're different," he observed.

Bulma nodded. "Yeah, I already explained it to you, but you were out, so you might not have gotten all of it."

"Well no shit," he responded. "What fool talks to an unconscious person and expects them to fully comprehend what is being spoken?"

It was with a shrug she responded. "Wishful thinking, I guess." She stretched out, her back and limbs sore from prolonged time in the chair. "So to get back to my original point, we are one royally screwed up couple."

"And I suppose this is the part where you announce that you want to _fix_ it," the Saiyan sneered.

"Oh, God no." Bulma's words were fast and surprisingly full of laughter. "That's been my problem all along. I kept trying to fix us. But you know what? We're not meant to be fixed. And I don't mean that we're broken. I mean, we sort of are right now, but not nearly as much as we think we are. I mean that we are a messed up couple of people, but that _works_ for us. Ever since the accident I've been looking for some deep, meaningful history between us, because I'm sure one exists. But I've been kind of stupid about it…"

"No kidding."

"…and I've been looking for, like, hard evidence," she went on, ignoring his interruption. "I mean, I've been looking for wedding rings that apparently don't exist, and…"

"They exist."

Bulma froze. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Vegeta let out a low groan as he shifted his weight on the bed. He really had done a number on himself, and he could feel it. "Those damn rings," he pointed out. "They exist."

"Then why weren't either one of us wearing one?" she asked.

The prince rolled his eyes. "For a genius, you are remarkably simple sometimes." He shifted again. "You do not wear one because, according to you, it would only get in your way as you work in your lab. You are used to being able to grip things a certain way, and the ring hindered that. And I train in hundreds of times this planet's gravity. Most materials would flatten out in those conditions, and the ones that would not could easily cause catastrophic damage in an instant."

With a nod, Bulma leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. "I guess that makes sense," she admitted. "But if they're real, why can't I find them?"

"Why are you too stupid to look in your vault?" he countered.

Bulma opened her mouth, ready to fight back, when a thought occurred to her. "Wait a minute, the rings are real?"

"God, you're slower than Kakarot today."

"So…we're actually married?" She was stunned.

Across from her, her husband stretched out his sore back. "If you are expecting to hear tales of some ornate ceremony with you wearing a gown claiming the virginity you lost decades earlier, don't hold your breath. It was little more than the signing of a document. The rings were as ceremonial as we got, and as you already observed, those are stored away." Slowly he rubbed the back of his neck, rolling his head from side to side. "I thought you knew."

Bulma leaned back against the chair, her arms flopping into her lab. "Well, by father did tell me that we got hitched," she admitted, "but when I couldn't find a license or rings or photos or anything, I figured that years ago I fed my parents a line to keep them happy. I didn't figure it to be real."

"Well, it was." His feet hovered just above the floor, and he contemplated trying to stand. Had he been alone he would have attempted it immediately, to hell with the results. But in front of her, he was not sure if he was alright if it did not end well. The drag of his system was obvious to him. His strength was long gone. Trying to stand was more than likely going to send him crashing disastrously into the floor directly in front of her, and he would not look weak. Not then.

"Oh." She crossed her legs at the thigh, leaning against the desk. "Well, that at least answers one question I had."

"What are your others?"

Bulma quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'm sorry, are you actually encouraging me to talk about something real? Because I know my memories are fragmented, but that seems really not like you."

Vegeta shrugged. "Well, since we seem to be on the cusp of utterly annihilating ourselves with our current approaches, it seems a change may be in order."

Looking away, Bulma softly said, "Wow, we really have been screwing everything up, haven't we?"

"Not our finest hour," her husband agreed. "Now out with your questions before I change my mind."

Bulma shrugged. "Guess you're right," she agreed. "Well, hmm, what do I want to know?"

Her estranged husband did not seem thrilled with how long she was taking, but a screaming headache kept him from commenting about it for the moment. _I feel like hell_, he grimly mused, waiting for her to begin.

The heiress finally settled on a question. "What am I going to do about my company?"

"You have, by far, the most absurd taste in what constitutes a good question," Vegeta grumbled. "You can't remember our relationship, your first question is about where we have sex. You are given the chance to ask about our history, something that even you understand is a rarity, and you want to know about your business. If you could not remember an engineering project, would you ask about your mother's recipes?"

"Possibly," the woman quickly answered. "But you know what? That's what my brain came up with, so that's the one I'm going to go with. Any ideas?"

"You're mad," he mumbled in response.

"Not arguing that," Bulma said. "Now do you have any ideas or not?"

Vegeta rolled his head back and forth again. His entire body felt weak and stiff, worse than how it felt after months and months in stasis. It was an unbelievable nuisance, made all the worse by the fact that he had brought it on himself. "Just march your ass in there and show them that you are, and always will be, their boss. They challenge you, break them. They fight you, crush them. They try to stop you, you bring them down with such ungodly force that they will never again hold the ability to do anything. Crush them. Kill them. Destroy them. Own anyone who survives with an iron fist."

Her eyes closing, Bulma smiled. "That was perfect," she softly said.

Though he was not entirely certain what she was thinking, Vegeta again stayed quiet. The conversation alone was requiring more energy than he had to spare, and focusing was becoming more and more difficult. Trying to keep the world from spinning around him was taking most of his concentration. Trying to figure the woman out, a known energy drainer, was out of his reach for the moment.

"What you said," she explained, interpreting his silence as confusion. "There was just something so perfectly familiar about that cutthroat advice. Have you given me that talk before?"

Fingers began to dig into the bed. The fight for equilibrium was being lost, and fast. "Usually whenever you are about to bow out of something because of some lame ass excuse that is clearly a feeble attempt on your part to avoid showing fear."

The urge to point out that even her fragmented memories were enough to know that he did the same thing, she opted to keep it to herself. They were having the most real conversation she could have hoped for, and taunting him was not going to help. In fact, claiming that he had ever _feared_ anything was just about guaranteed to annihilate their civility. "Yeah, that sounds about right," she finally said. It was growing more and more obvious to her that he was struggling to stay conscious, much less coherent. "Well, as enlightening as this is," she yawned, getting to her feet, "I think Trunks is going to send up a search party if I don't get back to him soon."

Vegeta raised an eyebrow. "The boy is here?" If Trunks was in the compound and did not have someone there to intervene if another flair up happened…

"Yeah, Gohan and Goten are playing video games with him," Bulma quickly explained. She knew what concerned him, and wished to make sure that he felt secure enough with the child's situation to stay put and get some more rest. "And might I just add that I was a genius for rebuilding all of his controllers to be Saiyan resistant."

"You would add being a genius to working a microwave," he responded, his words fading in clarity as exhaustion began to overcome him.

Bulma shrugged again. "If you really think about the remarkable advancements in technology that had to happen in order for that to be invented…" She droned on and on about human inventions, attempting to take all interesting parts out of her tale. And sure enough, after a few minutes, the exhausted Saiyan was back asleep on the bed. "Good boy," the heiress giggled. "Now let's get you a few more bags of IV nutrients, and you'll be back on your feet calling me names in no time."

/

"You cheated!"

"Nuh-uh!" Goten countered. "You lost to me, fair and square!"

"Oh there is no way you could beat me at a game like this!" Trunks hollered back, throwing his controller against the ground.

Goten crossed his arms and glared at his best friend. "Oh yeah? And why not?"

"Because it is a _puzzle_ game, and you suck at puzzles!" the prince countered.

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not, times a million!"

"Do too, times a million and one!"

"Do not, times infinity!"

"Do too, times infinity plus one!"

"Do not times, uh, times…" The younger Son boy looked desperately to his big brother. "Quick Gohan, what number is bigger than infinity?"

Instinct had Gohan ready to respond with an accurate description of how infinity was more of a concept and was not an actual number, but common sense reminded him that such talks usually just led to bored, and usually more destructive, children. "There aren't any," is all he said.

Goten looked stunned and upset. "What?" he hollered. "That's not fair!" He whipped around, glaring at his best friend. "You can't use it!"

"Says who?" Trunks challenged.

"Says me!" Goten shot back.

Trunks got to his feet. "Oh yeah? You and what army?"

As Goten began to mimic his friend's stance, a throat cleared from the doorway. "Am I going to have to figure out how to get blood out of the carpets, or can the two of you play nice with each other?"

Trunks rolled his eyes and looked at his mother. "This is playing nice," he explained. "Not playing nice would already have Goten crying and us getting ice cream to help him feel better."

Bulma's eyes widened. "You would hit him hard enough to make him cry?" she gawked. She knew that the boys liked to play rough with one another, but she did not think that they regularly reduced one another to tears.

"Oh, he doesn't cry when I hit him. Most of the time." The boy dusted off the knees of his pants. "But he does cry all the time when I make fun of him too much."

Beside him, Goten nodded. "True story!" he swore.

Not entirely believing them, the heiress spared a glance at Gohan. Much to her surprise, he gave her a solid nod. "They really don't tend to physically hurt each other," he assured. "Don't get me wrong, they really can wail on each other when they're sparring, but they're both such tough little guys that they tend to get more thrill than pain out of it."

Bulma tilted her head. "Saiyan thing?"

"Probably," the teenager agreed. "In any event, you really don't have anything to worry about. They do this all the time."

His unspoken message was more than clear to the concerned mother. Hearing Trunks getting aggressive had worried her. They were still not entirely certain what specific things could set off his episodes, and the tones and body language he had been using seemed to show that he might be gearing into one. But Gohan's calm demeanor as insistence that all was well was all Bulma needed. "Alright," she responded. "But just remember: anyone in this house who kills someone else is grounded."

The two children, both of whom had since sat back down and started playing their game again, simply nodded along. "Dad know that rule?" Trunks teased.

"Possibly," Bulma answered, "though it may not be a bad idea to double check on that one. Gohan, can I talk to you for a sec?"

The teenager nodded and politely excused himself. "What's up?" he softly asked, making sure the door was closed tightly behind him.

"How's it going in there?" she asked.

"Fine," Gohan assured. "In fact, I think this is the most normal afternoon either one of them has had in a long time."

The scientist nodded. "I can't tell you how thankful I am to have you here for this," she admitted. "Vegeta and I had a nice little talk, but he's out like a light right now, and as much as I hate to admit it, you were right. I don't think taking on Trunks alone right now would be a smart thing to do."

"Don't worry about it," Gohan replied. "You know me, I'm always happy to help. In fact, it's a compulsion. Not helping actually causes me physical pain. Besides, I'm on a break from school right now. I've got the time."

"Well, you're still going above and beyond the call of duty for a friend." Bulma ran her hand over the peach fuzz on her head. "This is closer to normal, though, isn't it? I'm not just imagining it?"

Gohan smiled down at her. "No, you're not imagining it. I really wasn't exaggerating when I said this is the most normal day the kids have had in a long time. It's nice to see all of you falling back where you used to be."

"Thanks," she responded. "Things really are starting to come together, aren't they?"

"They certainly are," the teenager agreed.

"Yeah," she sighed. "For the first time, I really do feel like everything's going to end up just fine. It's been long and hard, but everything's going to be all right."


	17. Chapter 17

"So, how is this going to work?" Trunks asked. "I know the part about gathering the dragon balls and making the wish, but after that, what happens?"

It was a fair question, and none of them had a great answer prepared for it. Months had gone by, and though things had been terse at times, they had managed to form a new sort of familial bond with one another. It never quite fell back into what it had been, though, and they all wanted their old lives back. What they had worked for getting by. It was not what they wanted to do for the remainder of their lives. However, the boy had a good point. They were wishing the woman's memories back, but there was a bit of doubt that it would immediately fix their tensions.

"We'll just have to wait and see," Bulma honestly answered. "But I'm sure it'll be fine."

Neither of the males in her presence seemed entirely convinced, but neither of them voiced that opinion. The dragon balls had, in theory, just finished recharging, and they were gathering the others to help speed the process of collecting them along. In fact the rest of the team was due to join them any minute.

Krillen and his family were the first to arrive. "Hey, big day, huh?" the short man cheerfully greeted.

"Here's hoping!" Bulma responded with a laugh and a hug. "How've you guys been?"

"Mommy beat up Master Roshi when she caught him digging through her panties," Marron enthusiastically reported.

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Some things never change, I guess."

Marron giggled. "Mommy says she's going to teach me how to kick his butt because I need to know that before I'm a teenager."

The heiress let out a small shudder at the thought and immediately changed the topic. "Thanks, you guys, for helping out with this."

"Please," Krillen responded with an eye roll. "This is hardly the first time we've gone after the dragon balls, and with everyone we've got right now, we might actually be able to get them completely gathered in under a day. By the way, how many radars do you have now?"

"Three," she answered, "so we'll have to work in teams."

Krillen clapped his hands together. "Great! When do we begin?"

"As soon as Goku gets here," Bulma answered.

The former monk smiled. "Perfect, I've got time to make myself a snack and watch the game." As he glanced up at the others, he shrugged. "What? Has he ever gotten anywhere on time?"

Bulma laughed, and no one was surprised when the Son family arrived an hour late, with Chi-Chi scolding, Gohan looking embarrassed, Goten making a break for Trunks, and Goku casually greeting his friends. And soon enough, it was time to get the show on the road.

"Alright, so here's what I was thinking," Bulma announced. "We break into three teams and divvy up who is going after which blip on the radar. Two teams get two balls, one team gathers three. Goku's team will probably be the one to get the extra one, what with the teleporting and all. With it broken down like that, we should be able to have all of them collected by sunset. Any questions?"

Goten immediately put his hand in the air, and when called upon, he pondered, "What do we do if someone else already has a dragon ball?"

"We find a way to get it from them," Trunks bluntly answered.

The younger boy frowned. "We're not stealing from them, are we? Because that's really, really wrong."

Trunks rolled his eyes. "We're not stealing anything," the explained, using his one year age advantage to be the wise one of the pair. "Talk them out of it, and if that doesn't work, pay 'em."

"You think they'll give one to me for eight dollars?" the younger boy asked. "Because that's all I got."

"Oh for crying out loud!" Trunks proclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration. "I want to get the dragon balls! I want to get my mom her memories back! You know what? I'm going with you, and I'm taking my wallet with me!"

The others laughed around the boys as Bulma handed out radars. "Is there at least one person in each group with a phone?" Almost everyone nodded, so Bulma clapped her hands together enthusiastically. "Send out a message each time you get one so we can track our progress! Okay, I'll be going with…"

"No one," her husband interrupted. "You stay here."

She turned and gave the man a hard look. "I've done this before," she defended, clearly unhappy with being ordered around.

"I don't care. You stay here with me."

The heiress rolled her eyes. "You are an odd person," she informed him. "You have a magnificent gift of both flattering me with your protective nature and making me want to smack you for bossing me around. I wonder how you do that so well." But she knew well enough that he would stick to his convictions, and the only way to avoid a full on fight in front of almost everyone they knew would be to comply with is 'request'. "Fine, whatever. I guess I'll keep track and help redirect the rest of you."

After the others had a bit of a laugh at her expense, they headed out and began their missions. The first few minutes they were gone, neither Bulma nor Vegeta spoke. They simply stood there, looking in the direction the others had flown off in. Finally aware of the tension, Bulma rocked back on her heals and asked, "So, how are you?"

Her husband's response was a glare accompanied with the words, "Don't do that."

"What, make small talk?" she asked.

His glare continued. "Yes. We do not engage in such menial things."

"Well sorry," she mockingly responded. "It's not like I remember everything we do. If I did, we wouldn't have just sent everyone off to gather the dragon balls now, would we?"

The prince opened his mouth to retort, but his wife's cell phone rang and cut him off. Bulma whipped the device out of her pocket quickly and answered. "Hey Krillen, how's it going?" She listened and nodded along, throwing in an occasional "Yeah" or "Uh-huh". Finally she grinned and said, "Good stuff. You got the first one! Now go get the next one. Okay, talk to you soon." The heiress hung up and informed her husband, "Krillen got one."

"Yes, I was able to decipher that from your end of the conversation," her husband bit out.

Bulma shot him a look. "What the hell has gotten you into such a pissy mood?" she demanded.

He refused to give voice to his thoughts, for she would simply chastise him, or worse, make fun of him. It was not the first time they had been in a situation that should have her all fixed up and their lives back to normal. Every time it had fallen through, it had been increasingly difficult to deal with. And with that history of failure at getting their lives back on track, he refused to so much as hope that something like a wish was going to make everything better. There was no guarantee that it would work, and he had no reason to believe that this would be any different than the times before.

The heiress rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever, be a baby. See if I care." Again they fell into uncomfortable silence. It almost seemed as though all the progress they had made over the past few months never happened, and that they were right back where they had been. Almost an hour went by before the phone rang again. "Yeah?" she answered.

It was Chi-Chi on the other line. "Are you kidding me?" the younger mother shouted. "What is your child doing with that much _cash_ in his pocket?"

Bulma groaned. "Someone already had a dragon ball and made him literally pay for that?"

"No, they walked by a store and Goten wanted a toy, and after I _very clearly_ said no, _your_ son says he'll buy it!" The brunette growled to herself. "No wonder my boys don't listen to me anymore."

"Put Trunks on the line," Bulma sighed. As soon as her little boy was on the phone, she demanded, "What the hell were you thinking?"

"What?" the boy defended. "Goten wanted something, I could buy it for him, what's the problem?"

Shaking her head, the mother replied, "You know darn well that if Chi-Chi has said no, that means don't push it, let it go, and get over it. Why on earth would you off to buy Goten something that Chi-Chi has already turned down?"

"I thought she turned it down because she was poor!"

Over the phone Bulma could easily make out the squawk coming from Chi-Chi, and she could only imagine what the woman's face looked like. "You little idiot," she mumbled.

On the other side Trunks rolled his eyes. "No, Mom, that's Dad's nickname for Goten, not me. I'm 'the boy', sometimes 'the brat', but 'the little idiot' is Goten."

"You know what I meant," the mother chided. "When Chi-Chi says no, the answer is always no. I know you sometimes get away with negotiations with me, but how dumb do you have to be to think Chi-Chi, of all people, is going to change her mind?"

"I told you, I thought she wasn't getting it for him because of the money!" the boy defended. "I didn't think it was because she didn't want him to have it! He wanted a toy, they probably don't have the money for it, I have more than enough money for it, so I buy it and give it to him. What is wrong with that?"

Bulma groaned. "Look, just don't do it anymore, okay?" In the background she could hear Chi-Chi getting upset and Gohan trying to keep her calm. Not more than one dragon ball in and they were already at each other's throats.

"Fine. Whatever."

The conversation ended abruptly, and it was with a scowl that the heiress tucked her phone away. Trunks had ticked her off, Vegeta was not speaking to her for reasons she did not understand, and only one dragon ball had been found so far. If things did not start dramatically improving, she was going to have to kill someone. Deciding that there was almost definitely a better use of her time than standing outside and waiting for phone calls, she turned and went back to the house.

Her mood was sour, and that thought alone made it worse. It was supposed to be a good day, a happy day. And yet all she felt like doing was sulking in front of the television and gripe about how everyone else sucked. If there was a way to feel better, she needed to find it.

Settling on a classic, she opted to soak in a nice, warm bubble bath. She took her time getting the setting perfect, with calming music, scented candles, her favorite salts and soaps, and her ideal water temperature. The mere act of getting her environment set up helped calm her down a little bit, and it was with more than a little smile that she slid into the tub. "Note to self," she happily mumbled, enjoying the sensation of the warm liquid around her, "start with this next time."

It was just as she completely settled into her bath that the phone rang. "Figures," she grumbled. She shook out a hand, flinging droplets off without actually taking the time to dry it entirely. "Hello?" she greeted.

"Got another one!" Krillen crowed.

Bulma sat up slightly in the tub. "You got both of yours already?"

"Well, yeah," he answered. "It's been almost four hours, and I did get the two closest ones. Why? Aren't the others done yet?"

"The others haven't even gotten their first ones yet," the heiress reported.

Krillen paused for a moment. "Wait a sec. Do you mean to tell me that when split up, my wife and I outperformed the team of Goku and Yamcha, and the team that was, well, everyone else? We win?"

It was hard not to laugh at his eager tones. "Yes, Krillen," she giggled. "You win."

"_Yes!_" he cheered. "I finally kicked their butts!"

"And we're all proud of you."

"Ah, thank you, thank you."

Bulma chuckled again. "Well, since you seem to be the only ones on top of things, why don't you go off and try to get another one?"

A dramatic sigh came over the line. "I was afraid you were going to say that."

Despite the fact that she could not actually see him, Bulma glared. "Do you have anything better to do today?"

"Bulma, I'm shocked!" he responded. "You know that my social calendar is booked solid! I have a very full social life that I need to attend to!"

She smirked. "So, no?"

"Just shut up and tell me which one to get."

Bulma laughed and stood up, simultaneously disappointed that she was unable to finish her bubble bath and thrilled that Krillen was picking up speed. "Hold on a sec," she grunted, shaking herself slightly drier. With only a few seconds spent wrapping a towel around her body, she hustled into her bedroom and grabbed her personal radar. "Okay, are you looking at your locator?"

"Yup."

"Alright." She pressed a few buttons before instructing, "There's one about a hundred and fifty miles northeast of where you are right now. Go for that one."

Krillen hesitated. "Isn't that one of the ones Gohan, Chi-Chi, and the boys were supposed to get?"

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Yes, but since Trunks seems to be holding up the show by buying Goten everything he's ever wanted, they're going to need a hand. Now fetch."

"You know," Krillen said, "if it weren't for the fact that I know you're going to turn it all around on me in the end, I would so totally fight you on the fact that you just gave me a dog command."

"Good boy," the heiress responded. "Now, go get the ball!"

The former monk panted twice into the phone before he hung up. Bulma smiled. "Well, at least someone's getting something done." With a sigh, she glanced longingly at the bathtub. It was calling to her, to go back in and relax. She had not been out for long, and the temperature was going to be great. A little smirk crossed her features as she shrugged her way out of the towel and walked back to her calming environment.

Not one minute after she was once again soaking, the phone rang again. "Aw, damn it!" she swore, once more shaking her hand dry and reaching for it. "Yeah, what?"

A nervous gulp came over the line. "Um, I clearly got you at a bad time," Yamcha half apologized. "I can call you back in…"

"What the hell is it?" she interrupted.

Another gulp. "Just letting you know that Goku and I got one of the dragon balls."

The blue haired woman slumped against the edge of her tub. At least she would not have to get out again. "Good, we're up to three then. Go get the next one and we'll be just over halfway there."

"Oh, the other teams beat us?" Yamcha asked, sounding a little disappointed.

"Well, Gohan's didn't." Adjusting her shoulders to fit comfortably against the warm bathtub, she asked, "How did it take you guys so long to get the first one? Goku teleports."

"Goku teleports to people that either he or someone he's with can sense," Yamcha pointed out. "If he could just pop up anywhere, the rest of us would be pointless."

Bulma shrugged. "Well, even if he couldn't teleport, isn't he fast enough to lap the planet in less time than it takes me to pick shoes?"

With a snort, her ex-boyfriend answered, "The Geneva Convention happens in less time than it takes for you to pick shoes. And in case you forgot, I'm not exactly able to fly at Super Saiyan speeds. And before you open your mouth on it, no, I'm not letting Goku _carry_ me."

"We'd be done faster if you did," the woman pointed out, "but I suppose I'll let it go."

"Good for you. You're showing growth as a person."

Her eyes narrowed. "You know, it's the moments like this that I wish you and I were still a couple, just so I could deny you sex." Settling down, she said, "Keep me in the loop. And see if you guys can get a second one before Krillen gets to his third."

With the conversation over, she placed the phone once more on the rim of the tub and tried to relax. So much to deal with, not nearly enough emotional energy to do any of it for a bit. Trunks had suffered through a few more flare ups over the months, but he was slowly learning how to control them. And unless she was mistaken, something she hardly ever admitted to, he had grown almost three inches. Her little boy was becoming a young man so fast that it bothered her, especially when she thought about the fact that he was only nine years old. From time to time her mind wandered back to the day he first ascended, and guilt always started overwhelming her when she did. Two parents fighting had driven a child to such an extreme that he had virtually cut off the remainder of his physical childhood.

When her mind began focusing back on her son, Bulma knew her time for relaxation was over. Gohan had been practically living with them for a while so he could be on standby in case of an episode. He did go home at nights, and there were occasional days where the boy lived his own life, but more often than not he had gone out of his way to ensure that he was there and ready to help. He was probably having a lousy day, watching over an ever hyper Goten, a moody Trunks, and a worked up Chi-Chi. She would have to make it up to him somehow.

She dried off and bundled herself in her fuzziest, softest robe. Not for the first time, she wondered what was going to happen once the wish was made. Her relationships, though significantly better than they had been in the initial aftermath of her accident, were still more than a little strained. Would the return of her memories fix that? Would she slide right back to where she had been before anything had happened? Would her life go on as though the crash had never occurred? Or would it still play a large part of her life?

Bulma hated not knowing what was coming her way. She liked control, and she liked power. Sitting around and waiting for a miracle was not her style. Deciding that doing anything was better than doing nothing, she gave Gohan a call. "How's it going?"

The teenager sighed. "It's been better. The ball we're trying to find is, I think, at the bottom of a body of water, and since we don't know how deep it is…"

"Then you don't know exactly how stupid it is to go in after it without equipment," she finished for him. "Listen, you sound tired. Why don't the four of you come back here and get something to eat? If there are still a couple left after that, you can go out and try again. But we're up to three already, and it sounds like if nothing else someone needs to use my mini sub."

She listened as Gohan relayed the information to the others and they came to a quick response. "Alright, we'll be back at your place in under an hour."

"Great. See you soon." Bulma hung up and sighed again, an action she was doing more often than she cared for. When did she become like that? Oh, right. Car accident, severe trauma, slowly trying to make sense of a life that seemingly made no sense. Determined to be helpful, she tossed on some clean clothes and headed for the kitchen to program the robots to make a meal. They were not nearly as talented as her mother, but they got the job done.

It felt like no time at all had gone by when the majority of the Son family returned with her son. "We suck," Trunks pouted, flopping at the kitchen table.

Bulma and Chi-Chi both put their hands on their hips and simultaneously answered, though in very different ways. As Bulma insisted, "No, you don't," Chi-Chi scolded with, "Don't use that language!"

Trunks looked up at both women. "If you're both going to get on my case," he sneered, "could you at least present a united front? How am I supposed to know what I'm defending myself against if you two aren't together?" A smack came across the back of his head, and while the boy winced, he smirked as well. "See, that one I can deal with. I know the answer to that one!"

His father did not seem terribly amused as he leaned against the wall. Having the others in his home was not sitting well with him. His strength had almost returned fully, and he no longer saw need for Gohan's almost incessant presence. If it was his decision, the entire Son family would get out of their lives for a year, minimum. "How many?" he bluntly asked, not bothering to hide his mood at all.

Turning on the coffee maker, Bulma answered, "Three down, four to go. Krillen's winning." A small beep sounded, and when Bulma checked her phone, she said, "Correction. Krillen just sent a message. He got a third one, our total's at four. Has he always been this good at finding dragon balls?"

Chi-Chi shook her head. "Krillen has humor, Eighteen has beauty and strength, Marron is adorable. Really, if you gave them your son's wallet, they would be unstoppable."

"Trunks, go give Krillen your wallet."

"_What_?" the child demanded, staring at his mother. "You can't be serious!"

With a chuckle, Bulma said, "It's a joke, it's a joke, don't worry." The boy scowled and sank into his chair, but Bulma went on. "At the rate they're going anyway, we'll have all seven before dinner." Another beep sounded. "Yamcha and Goku just found another one. We're up to five. Hn, it seems that telling them it's a competition gets the job done faster. Should have thought of that years ago…"

The remainder of the afternoon went by without much excitement, save two more messages about acquired treasure. And just as the heiress had predicted, all seven had been collected and were ready to be used as the sun began to set.

It was time to make the wish.


	18. Chapter 18

Bulma looked down at the seven orbs at her feet. No matter how many times she had seen it before, there was still something awe inspiring as they pulsed with their combined power. The moment her family had waited so long for had finally arrived, and in just a few minutes, all the damage could be wished away.

The woman swallowed her saliva nervously. An almost inexplicable fear had finally caught her, fear that the wish would not be enough to truly fix all of her problems. Fear that the dragon lacked the power needed. Fear that her family was damned to be forever broken.

"Hey, guys?" she softly asked. "I know this sounds rude since I just made you all get the dragon balls, but…if you don't mind…"

She did not need to finish her sentence. Her friends all understood. All of them had been wondering the same things she had, and while they were all curious to see how it would turn out, they understood that it was a family matter first, and that added presences had the potential to be nothing more than added stress. Each one of them wished her good luck and departed, the last of them leaving just as the sun was preparing to set.

Trunks, his head bowed slightly, glanced at his mother through his bangs. He was quickly closing the height gap between them, and the change in physical perspective sometimes seemed to bring a regression in emotional perspective. "Mom?"

"Yeah?" Bulma listened to him, but her eyes remained on the pulsing glow of the dragon balls.

"What if this doesn't work?"

Both of his parents seemed to stand a little straighter, a feat that many would have thought impossible with Vegeta's previous posture. "It'll work," Bulma assured.

"You don't know that," Trunks countered. "We thought it worked before, but we were wrong. What if we're wrong now?"

"So what if we are?"

The three family members turned to find Bulma's parents standing behind them. Her mother, ever the spirit of joy and confidence, offered a simple smile. "It's not the end of the world."

Bulma shook her head slightly. "Mom, I'm not sure this is the best time…"

"Don't argue with your mother," Dr. Briefs intervened. When his daughter sent him a look, the old man shrugged and pointed out, "Has anyone ever won an argument against this woman? It seems to me that you might as well just go with it."

Trunks lowered his eyes to the ground. "It's not that easy, Grandpa," he said. "If the dragon can't fix this, I don't know what'll happen."

"You don't know what'll happen anyway," the blonde chirped. "No one does. We can't see the future ever, so why should now be any different?"

Subtly leaning over, Vegeta softly told his wife, "It is unnerving when she starts making sense on some level."

"You're not alone with that," Bulma agreed. "But, and I can't believe I'm saying this about my mother, she's making a good point."

"If magic were needed to make a family," Bunni giggled, "we never would have become a family in the first place. The dragon balls didn't start this family in the first place. Why worry about them this much now?"

Bulma gawked. "Where the hell was this insight three months ago?"

Bunni giggled, her hand delicately in front of her mouth. "Oh sweetie, I've been saying it all along. You just never listen to me."

"Be that as it may," Dr. Briefs intervened, clearing his throat, "you worked very hard to organize this, Bulma. Make your wish."

The heiress glanced sideways toward her Saiyan. "I have a question for you."

"Why are you telling me that instead of just asking the damn question?" he asked, his annoyance clear.

While normally she would have rolled her eyes, Bulma felt a somber sense around her. "I was wondering what you would think about asking the dragon if he could turn back time to the day of the accident so we could stop any of this from happening."

Trunks' head snapped up. "Yes!" he cried. "Ask! If we can do that, it would be perfect! Everything will be just as it was…"

"Until the accident none of us are aware of happens and the ordeal begins anew," his father interrupted. "Even if it was possible, something I highly doubt, simply rewinding only serves for the events that have played out to happen again. Nothing would change."

"But what if one of us remembered?" Bulma asked. "If only one of us knows what's going to happen, then…" She did not finish the thought. Even as she was saying it, she could see the fault in the logic. If one of them was burdened with the memories of what happened, the same tension would exist between them. The only difference would be that one of them would not know why the other was suddenly different.

A twittering laugh came from behind them. "I could remember."

Bulma glanced at her mother. "Mom, I can't ask you to do that."

"Why not?" the blonde asked. "You keep telling me that nothing bothers me, and you're right when you do. If it won't bother me, what's the problem?"

It was a tempting offer. One person able to warn them, able to stop a terrible family tragedy, all by stopping one single event from happening? It seemed ideal. But only a few seconds later, Bulma was shaking her head. "That won't work."

"Why not?" Trunks angrily asked. "It's at least worth asking!"

"Is it?" the heiress countered. "Didn't someone in this family try this technique already? Travel to the past, warn that something's going to happen, and end up accidentally ending with an alternate timeline that gets saved while his own stayed miserable?"

"But it's still worth asking!" Trunks insisted. "If we can do it…"

"We cannot prove that we, specifically, would be the recipients of that knowledge," Vegeta pointed out. "There is a chance that we would be left right where we are."

"But…but…" Trunks was feeling desperate. "We have to try! We have to make things the way they were!"

Slowly, a smile began to form on Bulma's face. "You know what, sweetie?" she softly said. "I think that's been our problem the whole time. We've constantly been trying to go backwards with this. We've all wanted to make it magically go away. But life never goes backwards, does it? It only goes forward." She looked up at her husband. "Things have been rough. Hell, I don't deny that at times, things have been downright bad. But in a weird way, I think this whole thing is only going to make us stronger. Even after everything that's happened, look at us. We're all here. We're all a family. Strained, stressed, or outright insane, we never gave up on each other. If nothing else, I'll get my memories back. That'll help things be smoother around here. But Mom's right. Magic didn't make this family. And we don't need it to stay one. No matter what, we'll be together. We're a family."

Vegeta quirked an eyebrow at his wife. "Turning your own question on you, where the hell was this insight months ago?"

"Beats the hell out of me," the heiress admitted. "Anyway, let's do this. I've got memories to get back!"

/

"Mom, where's the…"

"In the third drawer of your dresser."

Trunks paused in the hallway. "I didn't even tell you what I was looking for."

"Look there," she challenged. "Tell me I'm wrong."

The nine year old walked back into his room, opened the drawer, and pulled out his handheld gaming console. "How the hell did she do that?"

"Because each time you've ever 'lost' it," his mother called out from down the hall, "it's actually because your grandmother straightened up your room and put it right where you told her it belongs. And watch your language."

Trunks turned his head and loudly returned with, "We wished back your memories. How did your hearing get better with it?"

"It didn't," she shouted back. "I'm just better at anticipating what you're going to say."

"I'll say," Trunks snorted. It had been two weeks since the wish had been made, and it had been odd since then. They all figured out fairly quickly that asking for _all_ of her memories to be returned had not been the best way to phrase the wish. Everything that Bulma Briefs had ever noticed in her life was at her immediate beck and call, a blessing with good memories and a curse for anyone who had ever made an error in front of her.

It had, however, proven extremely beneficial in her quest to take power back in her company. Her knowledge of what her staff had been working on was complete, even without looking through her files. Arguments that she had been struggling with before the memory return were made with more force than any of her opponents could have anticipated. Bulma Briefs was back, and she was joyously dominating all of them.

The nine year old walked into his mother's home office. "So, when are you going to stop remembering everything?" he asked. "I mean, you're not really going to remember everything forever and ever, right? Because I've got to be honest, it's still freaking me out a little."

"Oh, you mean like the time…"

"Mom!"

The heiress laughed. "Look, I have no idea how this is going to play out," she honestly told her son. "My best guess is that eventually my mind is going to do the same thing that everyone's mind does. It'll pick out the stuff deemed important, hang on to that, and ditch the crap that doesn't matter, like every outfit I ever wore in third grade."

"You happen to have a day I can mark on a calendar for when that's going to happen?" the boy asked with an eye roll.

His mother smirked at him. "Did I have one the last time you asked?"

"MOM!"

"What, I'm not allowed to have a little fun?" she asked with a laugh. "I told you that it's as weird for me as it is for you. I might as well have a little fun with it before it drives me absolutely crazy."

Trunks crossed his arms and huffed, "Too late."

But his mother just smiled and said, "I knew you were going to say that."

The boy threw his arms up in frustration. "That's it, I'm out of here!"

Bulma laughed as her son retreated. She had not been lying when she had told him that it was an extremely odd situation for her to be in, but unlike she had been two weeks earlier, she found herself overall happy with it. If nothing else, it was fun to screw with the minds of everyone in her life. That did not mean that it was not without its drawbacks. Being able to remember every little thing sometimes did feel like it was driving her mad. Everything reminded her of something, and focusing had gotten extremely difficult at times. And it had thrown her relationships for a bit of a loop. The entirety of the early parts of her relationship with her husband were clear in her mind, and several parts of that had been less than pleasant. Baba had shown her parts of it, but even that had paled in comparison to the arsenal of information the heiress possessed.

However, more than just the bad memories had returned to her. True, they had endured a somewhat painful beginning, but a decade of growth as a pair was perfectly preserved in her mind. Unfortunately, something had been compulsively urging her to mention that to her husband on a near daily basis, and he did not seem to appreciate that. It had gotten to the point where when she began to mention anything even remotely along those lines, he quickly turned around and left the room. Oddly enough, Bulma was starting to enjoy the daily ritual. She was strongly considering adding it to their other traditions. Coffee in the morning, arguments before lunch, and family dinner of insanity were all well and good, but new traditions could be fun!

"Okay, back to work," she mused to herself. After all, there was still a substantial amount of work that had to get done for the corporation.

/

Bulma checked herself out in the mirror. She had spent almost an hour getting the room perfectly ready. It was not the first time she had planned romance with her husband since her memory had completely returned. It was not even the first time since the accident. But she wanted something special on that particular evening. If her calculations were accurate, and they always were, she had four minutes until her husband, sweaty from his workout, entered their bedroom. Normally he would go straight to the shower, and while he was a very strict creature of habit who had only recently settled back in to his old schedule, she was fairly certain she could convince him to engage in other activities before getting clean. It had happened more than once before.

Immediately at her predicted time, the door opened and her husband entered. "Hello, gorgeous," she purred.

Vegeta paused as he entered the room. Clearly she had gone through a considerable amount of effort to set up the room for amorous activities. There were carefully placed candles giving perfect lighting, the sheets were a variety that had proven to be a favorite of the couple during long bouts, and the blackout curtains were pulled across the balcony. It was obvious that she was ready for the long haul. With a sly look on his face, he approached his wife and kissed her. "I'll be out shortly."

"Oh, do you really need to?" she asked, biting his lower lip. "You're just going to get all sweaty again, after all."

Her husband smirked as he pulled back. "That would be more tempting were it not the same logic our son uses to avoid bathing whenever possible."

"I was hoping you wouldn't remember that," she mock pouted.

"You needed a wish to help you remember things," he taunted her. "I do it fine on my own. Now if you'll stop pouting for five minutes, I will be back."

Bulma huffed and crossed her arms as she flopped onto the bed. "You know," she called out as her husband disappeared into the bathroom, "it's not unheard of for you to postpone a shower in the name of sex." Although even she could admit that ninety percent of the time, he would postpone sex for five minutes to get hours' worth of sweat off of himself first. There was no denying that the man was a clean freak.

That did not mean that Bulma was not disappointed with that choice. After spending an our just working on the room, waiting five more minutes, knowing he was just on the other side of the door, naked, with hot water pouring over his tight, muscled body…

"Oh, the hell with this," she announced, getting to her feet and heading for the bathroom door. "We'll just do a little pre-show warm up…"

/

"You know, I can remember every time we've ever had sex," Bulma panted, wiping sweat from her brow, "and you still manage to blow me away every time."

Her prince simply smirked and placed his hands behind his head. Her statement was hardly news to him, but that did not mean that he and his ego did not enjoy hearing it.

Bulma rolled over, laying her ear against his chest and smiling as she listened to his strong, steady heartbeat. "So, as you know, life has been crazy lately."

Sitting up slightly, Vegeta looked down at her and asked, "Is there a particular reason you felt now was a good time for stating that?"

"Actually, yes. Yes, there is." Gently, she placed a hand on his chest and guided him back down to the bed. "For one, you have a tendency to listen better after sex, so if I'm telling you something other than _let's have sex_, this is the time to tell it to you." She nuzzled against him, smirking as she noticed his heart rate increase slightly. "You know, I could be really evil right now and make you guess what it is." Her smile only got wider when he growled beneath her. "See? I knew you were going to do that!"

"Woman…" he warned.

"Okay, okay," she laughed. "Tell you what, I'll see if you can figure it out." With a happy sigh she pulled herself slightly higher on his chest, then pulled his hands onto her body. "I have faith that if you just lay here with me and hold me, you'll be able to get it all on your own."

The prince narrowed his eyes. "Woman, what the hell are you…" His sentence stopped suddenly, as did his hand.

With a smirk, Bulma propped herself up on her elbow. "I knew you'd get it." She leaned forward and planted a long, slow kiss on his lips. "I took the test this morning, and it was pretty damn clear. We're about to have another source of chaos in our lives." She kissed him again, her lips still on his as she asked, "Are you up for the challenge?"

Maintaining the kiss, he challenged back, "For a woman who claims to remember everything, you seem to be completely missing memories of how it went when we had the first one."

"Oh, I remember," she replied, swinging her legs onto either side of his lap, her mouth still kissing him as she did so. "But since we don't have impending doom hanging over our heads, and you and I are, you know, talking to each other, I have a hunch it'll go smoother this time."

"You're insane."

"That's why you're still here with me."

She had a point there. "You do not seriously expect this to go without incident."

"Of course not." She ran her fingers through his hair, her nails settling on the back of his head. "That's why I didn't say that life was going to get easy. I said that it was getting chaotic."

He pulled her tightly against his body. "I suppose a little chaos could be tolerable."

Leaning in, she kissed his neck. "Are you kidding me?" she chuckled through her kisses. "A little chaos is not 'tolerable' for us. A little chaos is _normal_. That's what we built our life on, and I, for one, choose to embrace it." She pulled back and smiled at him. "Life's always in chaos as you move forward. That's the fun of it. And I will never, ever forget that."


End file.
